


A Statue Strong Enough for Two

by lady_ragnell



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/F, See notes for warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-27
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-27 02:06:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 38,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/656879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elena is a street-level superhero--she's never been one of the ones who wanted glory. Now, though, a visit from an old enemy forces her to step up and see what she might have to do with the Sidhe who invaded and were sent away twenty years ago. Luckily, she has fellow superheroes, especially the Huntress, to back her up, and a new girlfriend in her regular life to make things feel more normal. (Though nothing, of course, can ever be normal when you've got a secret identity.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Statue Strong Enough for Two

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://kinkme-merlin.livejournal.com/33344.html?thread=35335744#t35335744) on the kink meme.
> 
> The title is from Ian Axel's "This is the New Year."
> 
> **Warnings:** this being a superhero story, there is some violence and minor character death, including one brief scene where a character deliberately injures herself in the course of fighting evil, and another where two characters who are friendly spar and come out with some bruises. None of the above is very explicit, but do be warned that it is present.

Elena leaves the big-time superheroing to the big-time superheroes.

She appreciates the use of her own superpowers—being a bit of a chameleon and able to do at least cursory changes to her appearance means she’s one of the best stealth fighters in the city—but she has no illusions of being able to go up against the High Priestess or Dr. Odin or the Sorceress if she’s on the wrong side of the law this week, at least not on her own. She leaves that to the Prince and the Warlock and the Knight Brigade (and the Sorceress if she’s on the right side of the law this week). They’ve got the firepower, and if that also gets them the glory … well, Elena doesn’t fight crime for the glory. Her dad’s a cop, after all.

Besides, she likes the quiet of the streets at night, the way sometimes, in between the petty theft and the crime lords and the people staring at the pavement ahead of them like it’s all they can look at, she sees something small and amazing—a little girl skipping along the street with her dad showing how she learned how to turn a crumpled-up newspaper into a rose, a couple obviously on a first date trying to figure out how to say goodbye at the door, a whole neighborhood turned out for the 90th birthday of a woman who lives alone. They’re the kinds of moments she’s learned to appreciate in the years since she took to the streets, and they’re worth not having action figures and celebrity appearances.

(The closest she’s been to fame is the little girl she saw on Halloween dressed up as Changeling, which is more than enough for her.)

She likes the other supers who work on the streets, too—the ones who buy coffee for the night cops and nod at her as they pass on the rooftops and have a rotation going so there’s no less than three of them in the city every night. They’re probably her best friends, even if they don’t even know her real name—the Butterfly, who can fly and shrink, Bastet, who’s a shapechanger like Elena (only she turns into sort of a catlike thing with wings and rips villains to _shreds_ ), the Knights when they aren’t teamed up with the Prince and the Warlock, and, most of all the Huntress.

The Huntress came on the scene a few years before Elena, and she could easily be one of the heroes everyone knows, one of the ones who fights the big villains and goes bravely through interdimensional portals and gets written about in the papers. She’s got super speed and some strength and the entirely human ability to hit any target she sets her sights on with tranquilizer gun or arrow, and she’s easily the best-known street-level super Albion has. Instead of taking advantage, though, she patrols the streets and muddies up her costume in fights and always turns up when Elena gets in over her head. Elena trained with the police and got the super training everyone gets if they manifest, but doing it on the street is different, and without the Huntress she would have slunk home in defeat after a week.

And, somehow, most miraculously, Huntress always seems glad to see her when they’re out on the same nights, goes out of her way to patrol together when it’s a quiet night. And it is a quiet night, so if Elena swings her path past a few of the Huntress’s favorite haunts, well, she can’t be blamed.

She’s lucky—they run into each other early, breaking up a bar fight in the Rising Sun, where someone routinely has to do so every night, like the thugs of the city want to make sure they’re warmed up for the night. By the end, they’re both breathing a little hard and grinning. Huntress adjusts her hood and gives her a hand up to the roof when the police come. “You don’t usually patrol on Thursdays, this is a nice surprise.”

“Unexpected time off work,” she says, shaking out her muscles. “And with the Rogue Knight out of the city I thought it would be a help.”

The Huntress laughs. “You certainly do less showing off. What’s the new move with pinning the perps to the walls?”

“I’ve been patrolling with the Smith Knight a lot lately, he’s got these great projectile cuff things that attach to walls and keep criminals there long enough for the police to get there. I think the Lady Smith invented them, I’m trying to get my hands on some.”

“You handle them quite well on your own.” The Huntress sets about reloading her gun and sorting through her darts—apparently she’s without the bow tonight, maybe wanting more stealth. “I’m glad to have you about, I feel as if you’ve changed your schedule recently so I hardly see you.”

Elena’s been promoted to assistant manager at the coffee shop where she works, but she can’t really bring herself to say that. The Huntress probably has some sort of glamorous day job, like being a model or a politician or a professor. “Changes in work schedule. Doing this for free is rewarding, but I’ve got to pay the bills, unfortunately.” And maybe someday she’ll make enough to move out of her father’s house. She has no idea how the Prince and the Warlock and the Sorceress manage the time to swan about the city in costume so much and still survive.

“Don’t I know it? I’m lucky to have a regular nine-to-five.”

Elena grimaces. “How do you survive a schedule like that? When do you sleep?”

There’s a long sigh—not as though she’s put out at Elena for asking questions, but a general sigh of circumstance, or at least Elena thinks so. It’s hard to figure these things out when she hasn’t got a facial expression to go by. “Weekends,” says the Huntress, slotting all her tools back where they belong. Elena has really got to get a utility belt. “There’s a reason I don’t date. Normal people just don’t get the schedule.”

“And relationships between supers are … complicated,” Elena finishes. Everyone has at least one inadvisable relationship with a fellow hero (Elena’s was with the Rogue Knight. So was the Butterfly’s. And the Smith Knight’s. And possibly Bastet’s, though they may still be sleeping together, one never knows with the Rogue. Maybe it’s just inadvisable to have relationships with _him_ ), and while some of them work out amazingly (the Smugglers aren’t the only husband-and-wife team out there), a few too many end in hostage situations and horrible recriminations.

“Exactly. It isn’t as if I never think of it—normals and supers both—but it always seems too dangerous to risk. I’ve got a few powerful enemies.”

Elena’s got no right to feel a little disappointed at that thought—the Huntress may be one of her best friends, and sort of incredibly amazing, but it isn’t as if she didn’t know she’s got no chance. She’s got a habit of falling for girls she has no chance with, anyway. It isn’t as if this is anything new. “Why don’t we swing by City Hall?” she says instead of continuing the conversation. “The mayor gave that big speech today, there might be a bit of trouble.”

“Of course,” says the Huntress, something off in her tone that Elena can’t analyze with nothing more to go on. “After you.”

Elena grins at her, glad she can at least disguise herself without bothering with a mask most of the time, and goes running off into the night.

*

“8:15 soy latte with hazelnut is here,” says Sefa, poking her head into the back room where Elena is trying to take inventory but mostly losing count of things because she’s exhausted.

If Elena were a better assistant manager, she would tell Sefa off for being unprofessional, but considering she’s consumed more coffee than she’s sold this morning, she doesn’t think she’s a very good assistant manager. “She has a name.”

“She’s _in line_.” Sefa’s pleading stare is really too good, and Elena has all the sternness of pastry filling. “And she was looking around behind the bar like she was hoping to see you.”

“She was no such thing!” Elena gives serious thought to burying her head in a bag of coffee beans like an ostrich.

Sefa smiles. “Well, you’ll just have to come out and see, won’t you?” She looks around at the mess that is the back room and diplomatically adds “And I’ll finish inventory, I’ve been trained for it.”

Elena just barely manages not to wail her answer. “But I’m the _manager_.”

“Yes, and you’re delegating, now go out there, Gilli really can’t be trusted on his own.”

As Gilli is still learning to control the superpowers he came into later than normal, that is actually true: he has a bit of a tendency to get combative when flustered, and then things go flying about and there are messes. Elena flees just slowly enough so it doesn’t seem like she’s running. Sure enough, Gilli’s up front looking like a deer in headlights with a line nine deep and Mithian King, the mayor’s daughter, at the end of it.

Not for the first time, Elena wishes she had super speed or something else that would be useful in the coffee industry, but then again the point of a secret identity means _secrets_. A few people from her childhood know she’s a super, but she doesn’t go showing every customer who walks into _Gallant Coffee_. Instead, she puts on her most charming smile and looks over the line. “One moment and we’ll get you all sorted, promise. Cups, Gilli?”

They get through the drinks no trouble, from there, though a mug shatters along the way and a muffin meets with a terrible undeserving fate (the mug could have been saved if Elena used the trick where she makes her fingers sticky, one of her favorites, but everyone was watching, so she let it go). Elena leaves Gilli with the two customers who came in while they were sorting out the line and leans up against the coffee bar, wondering if it would terribly unprofessional to climb up on it and take a nap (yes).

Someone laughs softly nearby, and Elena snaps up straight to find the mayor’s daughter toasting her with her coffee cup. “Tired?”

“You have no idea,” she says fervently, pulling a smile on again. “But the great thing about working around caffeine is that you get to concoct yourself drinks for free.”

“I have some idea.” Mithian King takes a long, satisfied pull of her drink. “I’m a lawyer, and they all like piling work on me to make sure they aren’t going easy on the mayor’s daughter.”

“I know.” Elena blushes when Mithian blinks at her. “You give a lot of press conferences? I mean, it’s hard not to recognize you when you come in here all the time.”

Luckily, that makes Mithian laugh instead of creeping her out. “I suppose that’s true. What’s keeping you up late, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Elena shrugs. “Night classes.” Half the supers in the city use night classes as an excuse (often corroborated by Dr. Gaius in the biology lab at the university, bless his former-superhero heart; he may be sort of bitchy but he’s a former active superhero who’s actually lived to old age, she respects the hell out of him for that), but since she does take the occasional class it’s a better excuse for her than for most. “Social services,” she adds when Mithian shows no interest in wandering off at the slightest hint of her boring life.

For some reason, that makes Mithian look even _more_ interested, face lighting up. “What kind of social services?”

“My dad’s a cop, I see all sorts of folks in trouble, might as well try to make the system work for them.” She nods at Mithian. “Sounds to me like you do a lot of that too.”

“I suppose I do.” Mithian watches her for a long, tense moment and then turns towards the door. “And now I should go to work, or I’ll magically wind up with all the worst briefings on my desk when I get there. Have a good day, Elena.”

Before Elena, wide-eyed, can ask how Mithian King of all people knows her name, Gilli clears his throat meaningfully and points at his own nametag. “Have a good day, Ms. King,” she replies once they are all fully aware of her stupidity. “Gilli, do you know how to make the caramel macchiato?”

She engrosses herself in the drinks machine and the next trickle of customers and the next time she looks up, Mithian King is gone and Sefa is back in the front. “That went well,” Sefa offers when Elena looks at her.

“There was nothing to go well.” So maybe she makes a bit of a production out of embarrassing herself every morning at 8:15 when Mithian comes in for her morning latte. She’s susceptible to nice hair and eyes and, yes, okay, breasts, but the point of pointless crushes on customers is that they’re _pointless_ (she thinks she may have contradicted herself there). It’s jarring having Mithian _talk_ to her. “I’m going to tell Annis to stop scheduling me with all you horrible people.”

Sefa actually looks as if she’s wondering if she’s overstepped her bounds, but Gilli just goes about washing a few dishes. “She thinks it’s character building.”

“She thinks _everything_ is character building.” Elena is willing to bet that Annis is or was some kind of super, but she is still up in the air on what side of the law she’s on. (In the very strictest of senses, they’re all on the wrong side of it, but the police are willing to overlook people working in their best interests.) “She told me putting out rat traps was character building my first week on the job.”

Sefa looks alarmed. “Rat traps?”

“Don’t worry, they never caught anything. Either the rats were nonexistent or they are far smarter than we give them credit for.” Elena yawns. “I hate everything, opening shifts two days in a row are—”

“Character building,” Sefa and Gilli chorus as one.

Elena throws her hands up and goes back to the back room to continue the inventory. She’s lucky it’s an all-day job, she’s really not fit to talk to customers. Her chat with Mithian King proved that much.

*

If Elena has a nemesis, it’s probably Grunhilda. She hasn’t got a secret identity, since she’s technically been a fugitive since Elena was nine, but she still manages to be in the city just when Elena starts feeling safe from her, every time. It’s never anyone else, just Elena, and Grunhilda tried to kidnap her for the first time when she was six, succeeded for the first time when she was nine, and did it twice more before Elena was fifteen and manifested and started fighting back.

Still, every year or so, she comes back, tries to get to Elena either with bribes or force, and always escapes before Elena or the police can do anything about her. She’s not anyone’s real priority—a kidnapper who only fixates on one girl isn’t a very good one, Sidhe sympathizer or not—so Elena isn’t surprised that she keeps creeping through the city’s defenses.

It’s been nearly eighteen months this time, but Elena feels the shiver on the street a few days after her patrol with the Huntress that always means Grunhilda is somewhere around, prowling the streets looking for her.

Bastet is the first super she runs into that night. Elena falls into step with her as they range over the roofs in the business district. “I might have to take myself off patrol for a few weeks,” she says after a while.

Bastet stops her easy jog. “What for?”

“Someone with a personal grudge is in town.”

“You know we’ll all look out for you, help if you ask.” Bastet sounds concerned. “You helped me out with Bounty last autumn.”

Elena shakes her head. “She’s only interested in me, and I don’t want anyone else in the crossfire.” Her dad was out of commission for months the last time he got involved. “I’ll finish out the night, but I’m on personal business for a while after.”

“I’ll pass word around, and any of us will jump at the chance if you need to call in backup. Take care of yourself, okay, Changeling?”

“Definitely.” There’s the wail of a siren in the distance—just the one. “I’ll go investigate that, see if they need a little backup. You keep on with patrol. See you soon.”

Bastet waves her off and shifts into her other form, flying off into the night. Elena jumps across rooftops and gets along with her job, even if it’s not the one she’s being paid for.

It’s a quiet night, other than the creeping feeling of Grunhilda wandering around _her_ streets, until about three thirty, when she’s thinking about heading home, and she runs into the Huntress and blinks. “Oh, hello, didn’t think you were on tonight. Weren’t you last night?”

“Come sit down.” Huntress sits down on the edge of a roof, dangling her feet, and Elena follows suit. There’s no reason not to. “I’m not, really. But I got a call about you—Rogue talked to Bastet, and then he talked to a few other people, and then I got a call saying you’re taking yourself out of rotation for a while. What’s the matter?”

Elena blinks. The superhero network all gossips, of course, but she can’t imagine getting out of bed at three in the morning on the strength of word of mouth just to check on someone’s personal time. She can’t imagine anyone would think to _contact_ her at three in the morning like it was some sort of emergency. “An old enemy is in town. She’s got a tendency to throw wrenches in things, so I’m a liability for a while.”

Huntress leans against her, so obviously out of persona that it’s a little scary. “You hardly seem old enough to have an old enemy.”

“I change my appearance,” Elena points out. “I could be fifty.” The Huntress makes a complicated noise, something like a quiet but horrified laugh. “I’m not, though. And … it’s a long story. But yeah, I’m not going to be patrolling for a while, sorry.”

“You know we’d help you. You know _I’d_ help you. You’ve never seemed the sort to strike out like some sort of lone wolf, Changeling. I don’t really have a nemesis, though I do understand what it’s like to want to do something on your own, but … God, I don’t even know what I’m saying. Be safe, maybe?”

Elena twists her hands together until the Huntress takes one of them between her own. She’s wearing her gloves, and they’re always a little softer than they look. “I’ll try. She’s never seemed to want to hurt me, not really. Just … control me, I think.” She makes a face. “I’m not worth that, not really.”

“You _are_.” They’re both a little taken aback at how vehement Huntress sounds. “You’ve got one of Dr. Gaius’s emergency buttons, don’t you? Please say you do.”

“I do. And a police panic button.” Courtesy of her dad. “I’ll check in on the message boards every couple of days until I’m back, just something quick.”

Huntress sighs. “I’d like that. I don’t see you much on the boards.”

“It’s mostly scheduling and the Knights putting up pictures of cats in masks,” she points out, and gets a real laugh out of Huntress. “But if you’re honestly that worried, I’ll do my best.”

“Good. You’d better.” She’s still got Elena’s hand trapped, but not as if she’s forgotten about it. She’s _clutching_ , and it makes Elena’s cheeks heat up. “I’ve seen a few supers disappear—one I knew pretty well, even. They just check out for personal time and don’t come back. Please don’t do that.”

“I won’t. She doesn’t want to hurt me, remember? And all of you have fun without me. I suppose I’ll have to trust the Rogue to keep things light-hearted in my absence. He’s the only hero I’ve ever met who actually _talks_ like he’s in one of those fancomics.”

Huntress laughs again and finally lets Elena’s hand go. “I’ll tell him you said so. Better yet, I’ll tell _Butterfly_ you said so, the whole city of us will be laughing for weeks.”

“Good. I’d better get home, and you too. Your cushy nine-to-five and all.”

“I’m going to need a million gallons of coffee in the morning,” Huntress agrees, and hauls Elena to her feet. “Really do call if you want back-up.”

“I will,” Elena promises. “I don’t have any illusions of doing something huge on my own. I’m just small-time. Take care, Huntress, and leave a few problems for me to solve.”

“Only if you come back soon,” Huntress says, and then she’s off and running, using her speed to get out of sight in record time.

Elena takes the back way back home. She doesn’t think Grunhilda is following her, at least not yet, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be safe. She takes the time to go from roof to street several times and ends up in the sewer tunnels and coming up into her house from the basement, stinking of it.

Her dad’s in the living room reading the news, just back from a night shift at the precinct. “Good night?” he asks, like always.

“Grunhilda’s back.” Elena swallows a few times, but it’s her _dad_ , who’s already been hurt for her once and who’s the only one who knows what it does to her every time Grunhilda’s in the city, so she’s not surprised when he beckons her over and has her face pressed against his shoulder before she starts crying.

*

In the movies and the papers, they always say things like “the attack came when she least expected it.” Elena’s not stupid, and she’s not going to relax, it’s not like she thinks Grunhilda came to town to have tea with old friends, but after a week of wandering the city both in costume and out whenever she’s not at work, she’s beginning to wonder when the other shoe is going to drop. When Grunhilda finally _does_ show up, it is in fact when she least expects it, but that’s because it feels anticlimactic.

It’s 8:08 in the morning, Elena is already on her fourth broken mug of the day, and when she turns to the next customer in line it’s a squat woman with curly grey hair who takes a moment to resolve herself into Grunhilda. “Oh,” she says, at a bit of a loss, and then turns to Sefa where she’s manning the espresso machine. “Would you mind calling the police, please?”

Gilli is already gearing up to use his superpowers, bless him and his hot temper, but Elena gets in between them while trying to look like she’s doing no such thing even as Grunhilda tuts at her and waves around until all the furniture in the shop is blocking off the exits. Fucking telekinetics. “Now dear, I only want to have a little chat.”

“Sefa, police, I’m not kidding,” she says. When she’s not in costume her best defense is to get the cops in. Unless Grunhilda outs her, which she’s really hoping she won’t. “She’s tried to kidnap me before.”

“Accuracy, Elena. I’ve _succeeded_.” Grunhilda is watching Sefa, just _waiting_ for her to go for the phone, which is why Elena presses the police panic button in her pocket. Sefa’s doe-eyed look of horror is an excellent distraction. Especially as Gilli is protective of her. “The time has come for us to stop playing around, girl. You will come with me, this time, or there will be such destruction—”

Gilli runs out of either patience or control because he uses his own telekinesis to start pelting Grunhilda with everything his powers can lift, even as Elena tries to shout at him to stop. The few customers who were in the store, the beginning of a regular rush, are cowering in a corner, but Grunhilda couldn’t care less about them; Gilli’s more of a danger with his lack of control. Elena’s powers won’t do much to help here, won’t really do anything at all except ruining any attempts at a secret identity hereafter, so she makes a great show out of bursting into tears. “I don’t know what you _want_ with me.”

She doesn’t, that much isn’t a lie, but Grunhilda persists in speaking to her as if she does, which she’s done ever since Elena manifested. “Oh, you know, and you’ll fulfill your part in things soon enough, I promise you that. Child of the Sidhe, you will bring me glory, you will bring me—”

Just as Grunhilda works her speech up to a passionate climax, there’s the simultaneous wail of a nearby siren (thank God for the police and their regular patrols) and the sound of the glass next to the door shattering and someone rolling inside.

Elena blinks, expecting one of the Knights or someone who can get into costume easily during the day, but no, there’s Mithian King, just in time for her morning latte, dressed in a sharp business suit and leveling a pistol at Grunhilda. “Elena, get down,” she snaps in a tone Elena recognizes from patrolling with other supers, that of someone who knows what they’re doing and expects their orders to be obeyed. She follows orders on reflex, pulling Sefa and Gilli down beside her, and there’s the sound of a gunshot, Grunhilda saying something in what Elena dimly recognizes as the language of the Sidhe, and then a surprised shout from Mithian.

All the confusion after that is from outside the shop, the police sirens getting a little closer, so Elena dares to peep above the counter. Mithian King is still standing there, poised to shoot, but Grunhilda’s gone missing. “Oh, fuck, did she learn how to disappear?” she says before she can stop herself. “That’s a new trick.”

Mithian stares. “You _know_ her?”

“She was my nanny, and then she went a little … off. Shows up on occasion to try to kidnap me. The teleportation is new. But she’s a … you don’t care, wow, sorry, thank you for being a heroine, you get your lattes for free for at least a week.”

That makes Mithian smile and lower her gun as the first few people from the street dare to come in through the whole she made going through the window. “Only a week?”

“We do have a business to run.” And Annis won’t be best pleased at the expense of replacing whatever’s been broken. They’re all very lucky that the PM created an endowment for the city to cover super-related damages to property, otherwise no business would be able to stay open more than a year. “But seriously, thank you.”

“It was my … not my pleasure, I suppose. Are you okay? Do you need a doctor?”

“No.” She looks at Gilli and Sefa, still huddling behind the bar. “They might need a bit of treatment for shock.”

Mithian frowns and starts in on moving the furniture away from the door. The police seem to have arrived, judging by the amount of shouting from the pavement. Elena can only hope her dad isn’t there, he does get worried when she hits her panic button. “Once they catch her, let me know if you want legal help to prosecute,” Mithian says over her shoulder.

Elena would love to answer that, or really to ask about a million baffled questions as to why Mithian would toss herself into a super showoff with nothing more than a gun and her apparently unrufflable calm, but that’s the point when the police burst in, and there are a million explanations. Elena makes sure to tell her story to one of the old guard of officers who knows her dad and at least has his suspicions that she’s a super, and then makes a great drama of it for Annis when she arrives to shout at everyone.

By the time she remembers she owes Mithian King a free latte (or several), she looks around to find her gone, probably off to work while Elena worried about keeping her story straight. It isn’t as if she doesn’t come in every morning at the same time, though, so Elena isn’t awfully worried about her.

Grunhilda’s new trick is a problem, though, and the fact that she used Sidhe spells to do it doesn’t help at all. She’s always been a sympathizer, prone to go off on long tangents when she’s got Elena in her clutches about how unfair it is that humanity closed the portal to their world off twenty years ago when they tried to colonize, but she’s only had her own superpowers, not help from them. That she’s got it now could have massive implications, and she needs to let the message boards know about it as soon as possible—though she may leave out the fact that apparently these days Grunhilda somehow thinks _Elena_ has something to do with the Sidhe.

She’ll just have to step up her patrol tonight, seek Grunhilda out instead of waiting to be found. Now that she’s attacked at Elena’s place of work, the only thing to do is escalate, and if her father gets hurt again, Elena doesn’t know what she’ll do.

*

That night, Elena goes hunting.

Her dad sees her out the rooftop access door, jaw tight like he’s holding back from asking her to stay in and put a post on the boards asking for backup. Elena looks as apologetic as she can, but considering she begged the police commissioner for police surveillance on her house for the night to keep an eye on him and is armed up with all the equipment she has, it’s probably not very comforting. “I’ve got four different emergency contact buttons on my person,” she says, mostly for something to say. “And I’ve got friends in the city.”

She doesn’t deny it makes her feel safer to know that Huntress, the First Knight, and the Smugglers are the ones patrolling tonight. Her father can’t technically know who’s out, but she’s hinted enough to make him more at ease as well. “Check in whenever you can,” he reminds her, as if she doesn’t know.

“I’ll be fine, I’m always fine.” Elena gives him a quick hug and gets a running start off the roof, shifting into proper disguise, changing to make her bones light enough to make the flying leap. Sometimes it makes her dad laugh when she’s showy.

It’s a busy night in the city, but Elena trusts Huntress and the others to take care of it and call in backup if they need it. She posted on the message board earlier, a quick _still on leave, some trouble, out in the city tonight_ , so if _she_ needs the backup, at least they’ll be ready for it.

Elena doesn’t get the feeling she often does when Grunhilda is around, like she’s watching and waiting to pounce, but that doesn’t mean she’s left in defeat after one businesswoman pulled a gun on her. Elena tries her usual haunts, the places where Grunhilda still has contacts after years and years, and then a few less usual haunts, and finally picks up a trail at a pharmacy a few streets up from the apartment Elena and her dad lived in when Grunhilda was still her nanny. She can’t decide if that’s a taunt, bait, or just Grunhilda being overconfident, but no matter what, Elena’s got to go after her, so she picks up the trail and follows it winding through the city.

The trail ends at a run-down motel in one of the rougher parts of the city, a place Elena has had to go to a few times before. She’s not stupid enough to provoke a confrontation inside, where Grunhilda can shut her in and do whatever she pleases, so she climbs up in a tree and does her best camouflage, watching people go in and out. Grunhilda will know she’s there soon enough. She lets a few things slide that normally she would get involved in, and she’s pretty sure she sees the Smugglers go flying by after a criminal at some point, but Grunhilda doesn’t make her presence known until about one in the morning (and Elena is really lucky Annis has the coffee shop closed for the rest of the week for repairs, so she doesn’t have to work until this is resolved).

When Grunhilda comes out of the motel, she comes out with a purpose—she must know Elena is there, she’s got some sort of sense enhancement and she and Elena have always had a weird thing where they can find each other easily, but she doesn’t look in her direction, just starts walking calmly through the city while Elena trails her from rooftops and trees. She’s walking a little slower than normal, maybe with age or maybe because Mithian’s bullet actually connected or maybe for one of a hundred other reasons. Elena sends her dad a quick text ( _eyes on her, don’t need backup yet_ ) and keeps following.

They’re heading for the river, Elena realizes after not too long, towards where it curves round the west side of the city, and it’s not the first time Grunhilda’s tried to take her there, either. She fires off another quick text ( _possibly a trap, all panic buttons enabled_ ) and waits until Grunhilda takes a back street without many people on it to drop down into the street in front of her.

“You came to my work this morning,” she says, by way of an opening gambit. “You didn’t need to bring this there.”

Grunhilda’s hand, when she raises it with the fervent smile Elena remembers too well, is covered in red spots and shaking. Elena’s alarm puts her just enough off guard that she doesn’t duck in time to miss the brick coming her way. It hits her shoulder when she turns at the last second, and she lets the impact carry her a bit to the side. That’ll bruise like a bitch later, she always wishes for healing powers, but later is later and she doesn’t want to worry about it now. Instead, she shoots a dart loaded up with tranqs from the wrist holster the Lady Smith made for her. It misses, but she makes Grunhilda skitter away, puts her off balance enough to get a few more weapons at the ready.

“You’ll give in eventually,” Grunhilda hisses. “You’ll give in to your nature, and I’ll be taken to where I belong, if only we go to the gate.”

Elena pauses, but keeps Grunhilda’s hands in sight. She always twitches them when something is about to go flying. “My nature? I don’t have deep-seated villainous tendencies, you should know, you _raised_ me.” Which is what makes the whole thing more awful, really. “You’ve never told me what you want me for.” The mention of a gate is niggling at something, though, if she just gets a little more time she might be able to put the pieces together. “Maybe I would have chosen to do it if you just asked nicely, you know?”

Grunhilda scoffs. “Your father wouldn’t let you, but you, I had such hopes you might see reasons. Your powers are very like Sidhe powers, it’s why you can hold their magic.”

It’s like all the blood rushes out of Elena’s face at once. “I’m what?”

“When the gate was closed,” she says dreamily, “they gave me the last of their free magic and told me to keep it safe and use it to open the gate when the time was right.”

That snaps all the pieces into place at once—only a living body can hold Sidhe magic, only the right sort of living body, and if Grunhilda wants to get Elena to a gate, to the river, where the Sidhe came through the last time she attacked … oh _fuck_. She hits the super panic button Dr. Gaius gave her when she took to the streets; anyone in the city limits with their button on will know she needs backup and where she was when she sent up the beacon. “What would you have to do to open the gate?”

“Blood, child of the Sidhe.” Grunhilda shows her the red-spotted hand, rolls her sleeve up to show it continuing up her arm. “I have some of their magic too, but I’m running out, and my body wasn’t meant to hold it. I must open the gate before it kills me, and they will bring me glory, and they will raise me up, so _you will obey_.”

Elena’s so busy being horrified that she doesn’t notice Grunhilda’s spring for action until she’s flying back into a building, a few ribs cracking on impact. She rolls when she hits the ground and comes up shooting, mashing her beacon a few more times for good measure. Grunhilda, in a show of more fine control than Elena thought she had, just bats the darts out of the air like they’re nothing, even sending one back towards Elena that skims her costume but doesn’t scratch her. Elena pulls at her power and hardens her skin. It makes it harder to move, but she’s less likely to be injured as long as she keeps her concentration up.

Somewhere, in the midst of flying debris, Grunhilda starts chanting like she did in the morning, something in the Sidhe language, but it isn’t the same words, and Elena doesn’t know what the spell is meant to do until she feels something start tugging at her chest. It isn’t physical, but it’s like something is wrapped around her bones and Grunhilda is trying to pull it out of her—the magic, the Sidhe magic. It _hurts_ separating out, but she can feel her powers still there, strong as ever, so at least she knows those are hers—or at least would be if she could keep her concentration up. Her disguise stays, because the blue skin is almost as natural as her own, but she loses control of all the protective measures she had up.

Grunhilda’s losing control too, trying to do too much and use magic that wasn’t meant to be hers to begin with (at least judging by the way the red spots are _spreading_ , fuck), but with telekinetics loss of control can mean anything from everything dropping out of the sky to a huge blast, and Elena doesn’t know what direction this will go in. She tries to get clear of the alley, but whatever Grunhilda’s doing makes her feel like she’s moving through syrup, and her ribs are stabbing her with pain every time she moves wrong, so she isn’t going anywhere fast.

There’s a loud shout from the entrance of the alley where they are, and Grunhilda loses control entirely in an explosion that pins Elena under a pile of rubble.

She loses a bit of time over the sounds of screaming and fighting, and then the second it goes the least bit quiet someone starts shouting her name at an increasingly higher pitch, panic growing. “Changeling, _Changeling_ , are you okay under there? I’m getting you out, just hold on a minute, just tell me you’re okay.”

Huntress. Elena’s cognizant enough to recognize that voice, and she stutters out an embarrassing groan before she manages words. “I’m okay.”

“You’re _not_.” Someone else talks in the background. “Tie her up, tranq her, drop her on the police station from six stories up, I don’t care. Changeling, keep talking.”

“A couple cracked ribs, maybe a concussion. Have you got her?”

Huntress breaks through the pile of rubble and just takes Elena by the shoulders and _hauls_ to get her out of it. She bites down on her lip and hisses through the pain. That gave her a few scratches, but she can sometimes do a bit of self-healing, with her ability to change form. “We’ve got her. You should have called for back-up way sooner.” When Elena peers over Huntress’s shoulder, the First Knight is busily trussing up Grunhilda like someone’s Christmas goose while she slumps, drooling a bit. They must have got quite a few tranqs into her.

“She took me a bit by surprise.” Huntress takes that as a cue to wrap her up in a hug, so tight it makes Elena’s ribs scream, but she doesn’t have the heart to ask her to stop. It feels safe, after the shakiness of the revelations and knowing that she’s a bit of blood in the wrong place from opening up a portal to a hostile world. Unless there’s some sort of ritual she’s missing.

“You knew her? I mean, she was your personal business?”

Elena nods into Huntress’s shoulder, ignoring the way her head protests at the movement. “She was my nanny, for a while.”

Huntress’s voice is small when she answers. “Oh.” Her fingers tighten on Elena’s arms and then she releases her only to catch her by the chin. “Pupils don’t seem dilated. If it’s a concussion hopefully it’s not a bad one. We’ll page someone with some healing for you.”

“You don’t need to.” Elena’s vision is starting to swim, adrenaline and her injuries conspiring to put her under, but she tries to rally a bit. “You all may want me off patrol after this, she says there’s something about me, I might be a danger, and—”

“You are the Changeling, and you are _ours_.” She doesn’t think she’s heard Huntress sound that fierce even when she’s dealing with criminals. “She couldn’t say a thing that would make us stop trusting you, okay? Just concentrate on healing and once she’s taken care of you’ll be back on the street like normal.”

She should put up more of a fight, but she’s sort of sprawled on Huntress’s lap and First Knight seems to have Grunhilda well in hand, so she just nods hazily and passes out.

She wakes once while it’s still dark, no idea where she is, to find a super she doesn’t know with his mask tied on askew holding his hands over her, eyes gold while he uses his powers. She hurts less, so she decides that he’s probably healing her, so when he says “Shh, go back to sleep,” she obeys, and just hopes the police know where she is and someone will get word back to her dad.

*

Elena wakes up in her own bed, almost completely healed, and her dad informs her it’s only been twelve hours, the police brought her home after the Warlock (and Elena has no idea who called in that favor) healed her, and Grunhilda is in custody, powers locked up so she’ll finally be prosecuted. After that, even though she feels healthy, he barely lets her out of his sight for three days. She posts on the super message boards, puts up a thank you to the Huntress, the First Knight, and Warlock for saving her and a quick, bare-bones explanation about the Sidhe magic she’s apparently got, offering to step into the shadows if it’s a concern.

The response, led by Huntress and Butterfly, is overwhelmingly that of everyone telling her she isn’t to step back and Sidhe magic always takes some sort of ritual so she isn’t apt to trigger it accidentally. She feels warmed by their support, and even more by the way Huntress peppers her with private messages asking about her health and if she’s okay and has she heard what’s happening to Grunhilda in prison.

After three days of effective house arrest, Elena puts her foot down and goes out to a club with some university friends, a madcap group that doesn’t ask too many questions about Elena’s name appearing in the paper alongside articles about Grunhilda’s arrest. She loses them all halfway through the night and just dances in the middle of the crowd, spending half a song with whoever happens to be nearest.

Sometime around midnight, she turns around at a tap on her shoulder and finds Mithian King standing there, in a sparkly top and tight jeans with her brows knit together like maybe the lights are bothering her. “Hi,” she shouts over the music, smiling at her. “I’m surprised you recognized me without my barista apron on.”

Mithian falters before she smiles. “I’ve had a song or two to make sure it was you, you’ve been nearby,” she admits. “I wanted to check that you’re okay, I saw your name in the paper, that woman who attacked you is in custody, right?”

Elena can’t help the way her face falls. It seems to be all anyone will talk to her about anymore. “Yeah. It’s a good thing the supers are around, I guess she made an enemy out of a few of them for some reason.”

“I guess so.” Mithian sighs and grabs Elena’s arm before she can find an excuse to melt back into the crowd, maybe find her friends. She’d rather not talk about it again, especially not to someone she’s got to lie to. Giving testimony in two different personas has been exhausting. “Sorry, I imagine there’s nothing you’d like to talk about less. Dance?”

“Yes, definitely.” Elena nods, relieved, and shakes off the conversation before getting back into her somewhat clumsy groove. Generally she just sways in vague time to the beat and waves her hands about in an approximation of what everyone else around her is doing, but Mithian seems to be an expert dancer, judging by the way she slides around behind Elena, puts her hands on her hips, and starts _moving_.

Things like this don’t happen to Elena. For all her life at night is like one of the comics she used to read under her covers when she was a kid, when she’s herself she’s generally pretty boring. Gorgeous people aren’t prone to plastering themselves all over her back and letting their hands rove, not when she’s not in costume. She’s aren’t-you-so-adorable Elena, did-you-just-fall-down-those-stairs Elena, you-mean-you-were-flirting-with-me Elena, but Mithian King does not seem to care in the _least_ , and Elena must make her really fucking good soy lattes because Mithian is just all over her, mouth wet and precise on her neck and hands sliding up to clutch at her ribs in a way that would have made her incredibly sore a few days ago, before the Warlock sped her healing up by about a factor of a hundred.

They don’t precisely get off in the middle of the dance floor—it’s too nice a club for that, and Mithian’s the mayor’s daughter. People tend to watch her. Not that they wouldn’t anyway, considering what she looks like. “Do you want to …” Elena trails off awkwardly mid-yell, even though when she twists Mithian is looking at her with interest. Suggesting the club bathroom seems tawdry, but she lives with her dad and she can’t really wish herself on Mithian’s home.

Mithian kisses up her neck to her ear. “God, I’d love to, you have no idea, but I want … maybe, if you wanted to get coffee sometime, or drinks? I don’t want this to be some one-off.”

Elena’s torn between feeling a little giddy and a sudden flash of guilt as she thinks of Huntress, the way she held Elena close after digging her out of the rubble. But, well … Mithian is here, isn’t she? And super relationships are complicated, everyone knows it. Her fling with the Rogue ended when she thought about asking him if he wanted to unmask for a date, thought about being just plain Elena with her habit of spilling whatever she’s holding and snorting when she laughs and talking too much about her dad and couldn’t imagine it. There are no hard feelings, probably because it happens to all of them (all her super friends can’t really be the glamorous stars she imagines them to be, Albion doesn’t have enough of them, except the PM’s son and his set, and they’re always too busy partying to be supers), but she doesn’t know if she could bear ruining things with the Huntress that way.

“Unless you don’t want—” Mithian starts, a little hesitant, and Elena realizes just how long she’s been silent, barely moving to the music as she thinks about it.

“I want,” she interrupts hastily. “A lot. I’ll give you my number, and you can call it, and we’ll set a date when we don’t have to shout. Yeah?”

Mithian spins her about to meet her eyes, a grin crinkling her nose up and making her look younger all of a sudden. “Yeah. Yes. I’m so glad, Elena.” Before Elena can ask exactly why Mithian’s so excited about a first date, Mithian kisses her, proper and on the mouth and _deep_ , after a second, bending Elena back into it. Elena does her part by wrapping her arms around Mithian’s neck like they’re in a film and kissing back with everything she’s got (well, not everything. As she and Rogue figured out, minor transfiguration powers can make sex _really_ interesting).

Someone nearby whistles, and Elena gives whoever it is the finger even as she pulls away, cheeks heating up. She shamelessly abuses her powers to hide her blush, since she’d like to at least have the illusion of being smooth. “So, call me about that date.”

“After you give me the number,” Mithian reminds her, eyes still on Elena’s mouth in a way that makes her shivery.

Elena casts about for something to write with and eventually comes out with an eyeliner pencil that one of her friends stuck in her pocket even though she isn’t technically wearing makeup (okay, so she can make it look like she is when she wants, it’s not that she’s lazy, it’s more that she’s invested in not stabbing herself in the eye). Mithian arches her eyebrows and bites back a smile, but she holds out her arm and lets Elena scrawl the number messily on her skin. “Hopefully that’s legible,” she offers.

“You are the sweetest thing,” says Mithian, and before Elena can feel offended that she’s talking as if Elena is five years old she dives back for her mouth and snakes her tongue in for a few breathless seconds. When she pulls away, it’s just as the song is ending. “I have to find my way out of the club, early morning. But I’ll call you, and we’ll go on a date. Soon.”

“Absolutely.” Elena doesn’t know quite what to do with her hands as the music starts up again, the crowd moving all around them. “Soon.”

Mithian grins one last time and melts into the mass of people, leaving Elena on her own in the middle of the dance floor, where one of her friends finds her two songs later, dancing along with the music again since there isn’t much else to do.

Elena’s phone buzzes while she’s walking home, pepper spray clutched in her fist even though she knows Grunhilda is in police custody (in a hospital, because the Sidhe magic has apparently hurt her more than Huntress and the First Knight did). _Didn’t lose your number_ , Mithian’s texted, and Elena saves it, feeling inexplicably safer as she continues on down the street.

*

Elena’s first night back on patrol, it seems like every other super she knows is hanging about, entirely by coincidence, as if the entire city is about to break into a crime wave on a Tuesday night.

She can’t say she’s not glad to see them—it’s good to be back, and to see them all, but she’s a little shaky from her last night on the streets, all the more so because the police station called in the afternoon and said the Sidhe magic had overloaded Grunhilda’s body so badly that she couldn’t be saved and that she’d passed away. Still, after exchanging all-too-casual conversation with every single one of the Knight Brigade, Butterfly, Bastet, and the Lord Smuggler, she’s about ready to beat her head against the nearest wall.

When the Lady Smuggler meets up with her as she swings by the motel where she hunted down Grunhilda, she can’t say she’s surprised, even if she’s a little disappointed it’s not Huntress come to see her. “Everyone missed you,” says the Smuggler, tone so neutral she must mean something by it. “Everything okay? Word in the evening news is that the woman you were hunting—”

“Yeah.” Elena really doesn’t want to have that conversation.

“Careful. Personal battles like that have an awful way of outing supers.” Elena freezes; she knows a few people have the tools to put the pieces together, but if the Smuggler is warning her she’s going to be outed to the city … “To each other, at least. And nobody will mention it, of course. The first rule of fight club and all. But still, it gets people knowing.”

She knows that, at least. She knows it would be really easy to find the identities of any of her friends, if she just _tried_ , but she doesn’t want to. She’d rather they all trust each other by choice. That might be what the Smuggler means, though. “I’ll keep it in mind. I don’t have a lot of personal enemies.” She shrugs. “And I’ve got a lot to learn about Sidhe magic, if you’ve been following the boards.”

Smuggler nods. “If you can get hold of the Warlock, he might know something. Otherwise, try one of the retired supers in the city, one of the ones that would have been there when they locked the gate. Dr. Gaius, maybe.”

“That’s a good idea, I haven’t had time to do it yet.” Dr. Gaius is probably her best bet, but he’s got such a tendency to _lecture_ and go off on long rambling reminders about how they must keep their powers secret and why is she visiting him out of costume. Still, she’s got to do something, find some sort of protection from accidentally opening a portal.

“We’re all on your side, no matter what.” A light on her belt starts flashing, and she looks down on it. “If you’ll pardon me, my useless husband needs getting out a tight spot. No extra assistance necessary, just me. Have a good night back on patrol, Changeling.”

With that, she’s off into the night, backflipping off the rooftop probably just to prove she can. Elena’s never quite got the hang of the gymnastics that seem to come so easily to many of the other female supers. No use getting bogged down in that, though, she decides. She’s back on the streets to help, not to socialize, and for the next few hours that’s exactly what she does—teaming up with Butterfly to take down a particularly evasive jewel thief who requires sneaking up on and passing most of the Knight Brigade merrily breaking up a bar fight (she can’t be certain Rogue Knight didn’t start it, come to that), but mostly on her own, reminding herself that even if she needed help with Grunhilda she can take care of quite a lot of criminals on her own.

Elena keeps expecting to run across Huntress around every corner—she’s been so diligent about catching up on the message boards it’s hard to imagine she wouldn’t take time even out of a busy evening to say hello and make sure she’s healed up—but she doesn’t actually see her until nearly two, when Elena’s camouflaged into a building waiting for a mugger running from the police according to scanners. She seems to be wandering more than doing anything purposeful, and Elena has a second to feel warmed that maybe she’s looking for her before the night’s criminal goes blasting by her and she jumps out to subdue him.

Since she’s taking him by surprise, the fight’s over before Huntress even gets down to street-level. Elena pulls out a pair of the Smith Knight’s special cuffs, not the ones that fly but some that only the strongest of supers can get out of, and puts them on him. “It’s good to see you,” she says to Huntress when she stops a few feet away, like she doesn’t know quite what to do with herself now that there’s no hoodlum to chase down. “Want to help me get this one to the nearest police? They’re looking for him. Then I thought I’d be done for the night, since the city is crawling with supers tonight.”

“Sure. It’s good to see you out again.”

“So everyone says. It’s like a party, only with more crime-fighting.” Elena hauls the mugger back up to his feet, nearly overbalancing in the process. “Police’ll most likely be back a little ways, I think they lost him.”

They don’t chat as they head in the right direction, since there’s always something odd about having a friendly conversation while there’s someone in handcuffs around. Huntress seems content to walk next to Elena, though, looking pointedly at the mugger whenever he looks like he’s considering trying to break away from Elena. That’s probably more a deterrent than Elena herself, but she doesn’t mind terribly if people aren’t scared of her.

It doesn’t take long to find a patrol car, and when the door opens one of the officers happens to be one of her dad’s cohort, one of the ones who technically isn’t in on the secret but has almost definitely guessed. With her talk with the Lady Smuggler so recent, it’s hard not to feel nervous about that, but then again, it’s only a problem if people she doesn’t trust find out, and while she doesn’t really want Huntress to know, she at least knows no harm would come to her because of it. “We found the mugger you alerted about on the scanners.”

Olaf gives her a slow nod. “Thanks, Changeling. Huntress. We’ve got it from here. You’ve probably got your own business to take care of.”

“I’m sure we’ll find some,” says Huntress, not quite sounding like her usual self, and they deliver their prisoner before climbing up to the nearest roof and starting a slow travel on one of their regular routes. It takes Huntress nearly ten minutes to say something, but Elena hasn’t got anything to fill the silence with. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

“Mostly because of you. I should thank you for that again. You and First Knight.”

“You’d do the same for me, that’s good enough.” Huntress stops walking and turns to face Elena. “I wish you would have just let me help you from the beginning.”

Elena snorts. “What, like you asked me for backup when the Sorceress was after you that one week?”

“No, she would have hurt you.”

It takes Elena a second to work past the immediate response of being hurt and work it into something lighter. “I could be offended by that.”

“Oh, shit, that’s not what I meant at all, Changeling. I promise. I had half the Knight Brigade, the Prince, _and_ Warlock who were all fighting her at the same time. You took this on yourself. And got hurt.”

“It’s one of the job hazards,” Elena reminds her as gently as she can.

Huntress sighs. “I wish it weren’t.” She grabs for Elena’s hand, just out of reach, and Elena automatically steps into her range and holds her own out. “I know it’s not fair, and we’ve all got things we need to do alone, but can you blame me for wanting to help you?”

“I suppose not.”

“Good. So be careful. We don’t want to lose you.” Huntress pulls her closer like it’s the most natural thing in the world and holds on, leaning their foreheads together with only the layer of her hood keeping them from touching skin. For a dizzying second Elena wonders if Huntress is going to kiss her, thinks of Mithian King and the date they’re meant to be having soon, but then Huntress just sighs and pulls reluctantly away. “I wasn’t meant to be on patrol tonight, I just wanted to see you.”

Elena can’t help smiling, even as she tries to be grouchy about everyone being protective of her. “Everyone’s checking up on me.”

“We all did it to Butterfly, that time the Jester made her fall in love with the Prince, and to Bastet after Bounty. Of course we’ll do it for you. And besides, you’re my …”

Huntress stops, and Elena doesn’t know that she wants to press for the end of that sentence. Maybe it would end in “friend,” and she’d be disappointed, or maybe in something else, leaving her with a decision she doesn’t want to have to make. “Get some rest, Huntress. We’ll be on patrol together again soon enough.”

“I’ll look forward to it.” Huntress cups her cheek for a second, long enough Elena thinks maybe she’s going to be kissed after all, and then steps back and runs off, fast enough Elena couldn’t catch her even if she wanted to chase.

*

Elena’s first shift after _Gallant Coffee_ reopens, looking much nicer than it did before Mithian King smashed the window in, happens to be alongside Annis’s.

Since Annis rarely works behind the counter in the shop now that she’s the queen of her own little coffee empire (and she’s some sort of heiress, it’s not like she needs the shop anyway), Elena can only suppose that she wants to talk to her. Especially considering the third person who’s working is George, who’s sort of generally terrified of Annis and makes a great point of being efficient and staying out of her way whenever she’s about. After a silent fifteen minutes while they’re getting ready to open, Elena ventures a comment. “The new decorations are nice.”

Annis smiles thinly. “Due to a firm chat with the administrators of the super-damage fund and some outside contributions, we were able to make some upgrades.”

“Outside contributions?”

“The mayor likes to encourage small businesses to stay in business despite the constant damage done to shopfronts in his city.” The mayor also probably likes to smooth over ruffled feathers when his daughter jumps through glass windows waving guns about, which Elena thinks may be Annis’s point. “I suppose I should thank you for your nanny attacking here rather than while you were out and about, I’ve been hoping to redecorate for ages.”

There’s no good response to that. “Um, thank you? I do apologize. Again. And thank you for not firing me, I’m sure you would have had grounds.”

“The woman’s dead.” Elena tries not to flinch. She doesn’t like to think about that, even if Grunhilda probably deserved it. Annis, as always, seems quite above little considerations like human life. But then again she’s always got more sangfroid than you can shake a stick at. “I see no reason to fire you after I just promoted you to assistant manager. There’s no one else who could do the job.”

George, from where he’s restocking cups, looks tragic. Elena tries not to feel guilty. “Well, thanks for that too, then.”

“And I’m sure,” Annis says, steel in her tone, “that you haven’t got any more former babysitters with grudges who will come here and make trouble.”

Elena pretends that doesn’t mean that Annis has probably guessed not only that she has superpowers, but that she uses them on the street. At least she doesn’t think Annis is prone to telling people these things, what with the possibly-being-a-supervillain and everything. “No, no, definitely not. No other grudges. Not nannies or au pairs or ex-teachers or anything.” Her dad’s got a few criminals who wouldn’t say no to giving him trouble, but they don’t have anything to do with _her_ , anyway. “We’re free and clear.”

By the way Annis almost invisibly relaxes, Elena can surmise that even if she’s guessed that Elena’s an on-the-street super, she doesn’t know her identity. She might have been one of the ones with a million enemies just waiting to take her down. “I’m glad to hear it. It does cut down on efficiency at work. George, for God’s sake, start a pot of decaf.”

That’s an abrupt end to the conversation, and Annis seems content to leave it there as the first few customers start trickling in. Elena keeps herself busy making drinks—like any business after super trouble, they’ve got some extra customers: people looking out for any sign of what happened, gossip bloggers hoping for the hint of a rumor to get them into the big leagues, people who didn’t know the shop was there till it was in the papers. She barely notices the time passing until she catches sight of Mithian at the back of the line, wearing a cream pantsuit that Elena would already have splattered in mud if she had it on. She checks the clock, and sure enough, it’s 8:11.

“Good to see you open,” Mithian says when she gets to the head of the line.

“Soy latte with hazelnut,” Elena tells George. “For Mithian. On the house, because she’s a heroine.” When Mithian objects, Elena holds a hand up. “I promised, remember? A week of free lattes.” Annis, nearby, clears her throat. “A week of lattes on me,” she amends.

Mithian laughs. “I suppose it would be bad of me to argue. Anyway, if you aren’t too busy, I thought I might ask if you were free this Thursday night. For that date. If you’d still like to.”

Seeing Mithian King a little unsure is more endearing than Elena was expecting. “I’d love to.” Annis shoulders her out of the way, taking the next customer, and Elena makes an apologetic face at her. “Anywhere in particular? I’m not … great at posh, I should say, you being the mayor’s daughter and all.”

“Oh, no, not at all. There’s an art gallery, not the frightfully stuffy sort, and an acquaintance of mine is having a little show that night. I thought I’d ask you along. Do you like art? If not, we can do dinner, or something.”

Elena grins at her. “I like art, don’t worry. I mean, as long as you don’t expect me to talk about how it represents the isolation of humanity or the futility of whatever or someone’s genitals. Well, maybe that last one.”

Mithian laughs. “God, no, it’s not at all that sort of thing, that’s not the impression I get. Something about interviewing supers about what their powers feel like from the inside, so it’s a little obscure, but interesting.”

Things like that tend to be a little awkward either because they’re terribly far off or far too close to home, but Elena’s pretty sure Mithian could have suggested sky-diving over a pit of iron spikes and she still would say yes. “Sounds lovely.” George delivers Mithian’s drink to Elena while managing to look both scandalized and annoyed that she’s daring to socialize while not on break. “And I really should get to work, sorry. Text me the details?”

“Absolutely.” Mithian takes the drink and steps aside for the next person in line, a businessman who looks far less indulgent than Elena would like. “I’ll see you soon, Elena. Take care.”

She’s off before Elena can answer, so Elena just waves when she turns around at the shop door and takes the register back from Annis, who smirks at her but doesn’t say anything. Elena’s not sure if that’s a good thing or not.

*

Elena doesn’t usually wear her costume during the day, but she owes a visit to Dr. Gaius to talk over what Grunhilda said about her and the Sidhe and as it’s technically super business she figures it’s smartest. He’s one of the few in town who probably can connect most people to their alternate identities, but he’s well-protected, and firmly on the side of good, so Elena’s less wary of him than she thinks she ought to be. She doesn’t _like_ him very much, but that’s a different question entirely.

There’s an entrance near his office that supers use almost exclusively, and Elena climbs through it on Wednesday afternoon to loiter in the waiting area while a TA watches her in the manner of one extremely put-upon. “He’ll see you now,” he says after a while, to no visible signal from inside. Probably telepathy, then, one of the rarest talents as well as the most unnerving.

“Great.” She stands up, brushes a bit of city dust off her costume (it doesn’t matter so much at night if there are a few bloodstains that won’t come out and dirt that seems ingrained into the fabric at her knees, but it’s one of the reasons she can’t really wear it out during the day), and walks into Dr. Gaius’s office.

“Ah, Changeling,” he says, looking up from one of his ever-present beakers as if he didn’t already know she was there and gesturing her to a seat. She perches on one gingerly. “I’ve been wondering if you would come to me, after what you posted on the message boards about the Sidhe. What can I assist you with?”

“I just want to know more. Everyone’s assuring me that I won’t accidentally start a portal, it’s impossible to do Sidhe magic by accident, but I want to know for sure. And about how it got inside me in the first place.”

“Of course. I was here when the Sidhe were, twenty years ago, but I wasn’t involved beyond a passing acquaintance with a few of their number. It was the so-called villains that saved us all, then—they hadn’t trusted the Sidhe from the first, so they were prepared to send them away after the White Queen was killed. The lines were much more blurred, in those days.”

Elena knows this story; all the supers do. It’s in the history books, yes, but the story of Albion’s history with the Sidhe and how the split between the so-called heroes and villains began is one they tell each other, too. Nobody gets out on the streets without being fully aware of all the history they’re stepping into, the way a group of close friends went from debating whether they should be using their powers to support or change the system to being bitter enemies almost overnight. Those aren’t the distinctions anymore, really, but it’s how they started. “I just don’t know what that has to do with me.”

“I’m simply explaining that I can’t help you, not in the way you’d like.” She can’t help the way her face falls. “I can, however, direct you to someone who can. One of the graduate students here at the university is making a special study of Sidhe powers. He works in the library this time of day, just let me give him a call and see if he’s free for a visitor. Will you wait in the hallway, please?”

Much as Elena would rather avoid spending more time with the graduate student watching Dr. Gaius’s door glaring at her, she knows nothing will get done unless she obeys. “Thanks, really. So much. And your panic button saved me, when I was in trouble. I owe you a lot of thanks.”

“My dear girl, it’s the least I can do, for all of you. Now, if you please?”

This time, her wait out in the hall is much quicker—which she’s all the more grateful for because the graduate student’s hostility is really getting out of hand, for no reason she can fathom. Perhaps he’s just having a bad day. Either way, after about five minutes, he nods at her. “Library, second floor, he’ll meet you at the stairs. Good day.”

“Thanks.” He just watches her stony-faced. “And another thank you to Dr. Gaius. If it’s not too much trouble.” No response, so Elena gives up and flees the room, going back out the entrance she came in and taking the back way to the library. She still runs across a few students, mostly boys who think it would be great fun to pull a super, but it’s easy enough to lose them when they get curious and get into the library, where the girl behind the counter nods her in without undue excitement.

The man waiting for her when she makes it up to the second floor is tall and lanky and dark-haired, with a big smile that drops pretty quickly, though he still looks friendly. “It’s Changeling, right? Dr. Gaius said you would be coming.”

“Yes, that’s me. You can … give your name, or not, I guess. I’d like something to call you.”

He laughs and gestures at his face. “Not wearing a mask, am I? I’m Merlin, grad student studying Sidhe magic, but I think Gaius told you that. Let’s find a seat and you tell me what you need to know, okay?”

Merlin puts Elena at ease more than Dr. Gaius or his terrifying doorkeeper, so she lets herself relax and stop fidgeting about with her panic buttons when he leads her to a little study room and locks the door. “I don’t know if you’re a super or if you have access to our message boards, and I’m not going to ask,” she starts. “So I’ll tell you that recent events have informed me I’ve been the unwilling host to some Sidhe magic since the portal closed, possibly enough to open it again. Did you read about Grunhilda Fairweather in the papers?”

“I did. The medical examiner actually called me in to help with cause of death.” She raises her eyebrows and he just keeps smiling. “It’s … you’ll know that most people can’t hold Sidhe magic, or can but it hurts them somehow. It’s not a matter of biology, not really. Supers can hold it easier than regular people, though that’s not universal, and certain kinds of supers hold it much better—mostly those whose primary powers are closest to the sorts of things the Sidhe do. They do a lot of transformation, which is where you come in, or just things to do with the appearance or disappearance of things. Ms. Fairweather, with her telekinetics, wouldn’t have been very compatible.”

“She had some of their magic, though.”

Merlin starts tapping a pen against the room’s table. “It’s … it would have hurt her, to hold even a small amount for that long, but not as much as using it. My best guess is residue from what she poured into you had stuck around, maybe hampered some of her abilities or her physical health. There would have been some toll, anyway.”

“But not for me?’

“Apparently not. Or maybe you’ve just been living with it since before you remember so whatever it is you think it’s normal. After twenty years, if it hasn’t been fatal or debilitating yet, it’s not likely to be, so you don’t have to worry about that.”

Elena sighs, thinks over her last few conversations with Grunhilda. “She used at least two spells in the last few days of her life, probably using up the last of her magic. Why would she suddenly do that after twenty years? And she started coming out in red spots after she used it …”

“Ah, yes. I saw those.” He grimaces and she remembers the whole medical examination thing. “Anyway, that’s the toll for using the magic—you wouldn’t have one, is my best guess, if you could access it, not if it’s close to what your powers already are. It’ll just use those same pathways. There’s always going to be stress on the body holding it if it’s not meant to, but the better-suited you are the easier it … pours in and out of you, I think that’s the best way of thinking it.”

“And why she would use it?”

“Your guess is as good as mine there. Maybe the physical toll from holding the magic was getting to her, maybe the Sidhe gave her a time limit on opening the portal again, or one of a hundred other reasons.”

“Lovely. Good old-fashioned investigative work.” Maybe a task she can give her dad, since he’s still worried about her in the wake of everything that happened. He’s got contacts, and the file on Grunhilda is still open anyway while they figure out what happened and what the Sidhe connection is. “Anything else I ought to know? What are the chances I’m going to accidentally open the portal up next time I’m out on patrol and end up bleeding in the river?”

Merlin shakes his head. “Little to no chance of that happening, you’ll be pleased to hear. Sidhe magic requires intent. Maybe not all the fancy rituals everyone says it does, but definite and focused intent. Since I really doubt you’ll be intending to open the portal, ever, I don’t foresee a problem.”

“Good.” She stands up. “I think I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

“Not at all, but I imagine you have other things to take care of. Let me know if you ever need more information sometime—I don’t know of anyone else in the city that’s still got Sidhe magic, now they’ve been out of the world for this long. I wouldn’t be averse to studying you either, with as much or as little identity as you care to give me.”

“I’ll think about it.” And probably say no, but it’s a nice offer, anyway. “I feel much better after this, thanks.”

Merlin produces a piece of scrap paper and writes a few lines on it—his name, a phone number that she recognizes as being from the university, and an e-mail from the same. “Really do contact me if you like. No need to go through Gaius.”

Elena’s glad to head home, shedding her costume and her disguise along the way, but the question of why Grunhilda used up the last of her magic _now_ isn’t leaving her alone, and it throws her off for the rest of the day.

*

Elena and Mithian don’t end up staying at the art exhibit for very long—Mithian’s acquaintance is a little dark-haired girl named Freya with a shy smile and a charming boyfriend, and her paintings are lovely (and some of them, even though they’re very abstract, are a little unsettling in their familiarity; she supposes Freya must have really _thoroughly_ interviewed the supers she painted interpretations of), but from the second they meet outside the art gallery, they can’t seem to keep from touching or smiling at each other.

Mithian’s wearing something hunter green and soft, flaring about her knees so she looks like some sort of movie star, and Elena can’t help feeling warmed that Mithian obviously dressed up for their first date, since most everyone else at the gallery is much more casual (thank God, because Elena’s just wearing her best slacks and a yellow blouse her dad gave her for Christmas, she would feel terribly out of place otherwise). It makes her brave enough to reach for Mithian’s hand before they’ve even finished greeting Freya and the other little cadre of people around the door, which inexplicably contains Merlin from the university. That throws Elena off a little, even though he doesn’t recognize her, but a warm smile from Mithian and she’s bolstered again, allowing herself to be led around the gallery.

It’s less than an hour when they’ve finished looking at the pictures and making the rounds of the room. Mithian seems to know everyone, but she’s content just to give most of them a smile and a nod and a brief introduction to Elena if they talk for more than a few seconds. “Anyone else you urgently want to talk to?” Mithian asks under her breath in the end, and Elena looks around to see that somehow she’s been steered right over to the door without realizing it was what was being done.

“I don’t know anyone, so no. Did you have something else in mind?”

For a second, it looks like Mithian might say something serious, like maybe she wants to introduce Elena to a few more people or do another round of the room, but then she falls into a sly smile. “Well, personally I prefer to visit art galleries when they aren’t quite this crowded. I’ll probably come back some other day, but it seems a shame to end our date early.”

Elena’s not stupid. She doesn’t have the most consistent dating history in either of her personas, but she knows what to do when someone looks at her the way Mithian is looking at her, like she wants to peel Elena out of all her clothes and tumble her into a bed, as soon as possible. “I’m sure we could think of something else to do,” she says in the most flirtatious tone she can muster. Hopefully it doesn’t sound like she’s suggesting an ice cream or something.

Judging by the way Mithian’s eyes go dark, she’s got it right. “If you grab our coats, I’ll make our excuses.”

With that, she pulls away and wanders off towards Freya, leaving Elena breathless and blushing. Someone far enough away that she should have been out of earshot gives Elena a broad wink—probably some sort of supersenses, which is really not fair. Elena always wishes she had those. To save herself further humiliation, she flees for the coat rack in the entrance hall and finds her own and Mithian’s in the haphazard pile.

“Thank God, I thought we’d never get out,” says Mithian from behind her, and then Elena’s pressed up against the wall in the entry way, coats still clutched in her hands as Mithian kisses her, deep and long. Elena parts her legs, lets Mithian slip one between them, and then they both freeze as someone near the door in the gallery starts laughing. Mithian’s the first to pull back. “Shit, I really didn’t mean to do this here. My flat is close, we should really go.”

Elena’s voice comes out as a squeak, but she can’t really blame herself. “Absolutely. Shall we?”

Mithian takes her coat and shrugs it on while Elena struggles into hers with significantly less grace even than she usually does. It’s rather hard to concentrate on getting her sleeves the right way about when Mithian keeps smiling at her every few seconds. She’s much more smooth when she’s in costume. At least Mithian doesn’t seem to mind—and, by the way the color is high in her cheeks, not quite a blush but not quite anything else either, Elena knows they’re both affected.

By some miracle, nobody leaves while they’re still in the entryway, because it would be frightfully obvious to anyone who saw just what they’re leaving to do. Instead, they make it down to the street unaccosted, where Mithian takes her by the hand and starts leading her off down the street.

“How do you know Freya?” Elena asks, almost at random, after a minute or so. It isn’t as if they can spend the whole walk in silence.

Mithian starts a little, hand flexing around Elena’s. “One of the boring stories, I’m afraid—a friend introduced us a few years ago, and then we kept running into each other, so we got to chatting.”

“Is she a super? I mean, it’s probably none of my business, I’m just always curious when people choose to study about being supers or do paintings like that.” And the appearance of Merlin the graduate student is still making her curious, too.

“She might be. I’m not certain, really. If she is, she’s not open about it except to her close friends, which I’m not.” Mithian smiles at her. “I don’t mind you asking, you know.”

Elena laughs, a little giddy. “Right, then. I should be nosier. Are you?”

There’s a little pause. “Nosy? Or a super?”

“Well, either. But I meant the latter.”

Mithian smiles, stopping them in the street to give Elena a quick kiss. “Why, do you think I’m the hero type?”

“You came through my shop window with a gun and confronted a woman with superheroes,” Elena points out. “I wouldn’t be surprised.” That, she realizes belatedly, is a very good point and one she ought to have connected before. Not that it’s her business on a first date, not really, but she can’t help wondering, considering most of her best friends are supers she only knows in costume. Mithian’s the mayor’s daughter, though, so chances are she runs with the sort of supers that get the glory, fight the big villains—if she is a super, she’s the Sorceress, maybe (and oh, wouldn’t that be a problem with Huntress, if this ever gets serious), or someone else of that ilk.

“You’ll just have to guess,” says Mithian, and starts pulling her along the street again. It isn’t an answer at all, but Elena doesn’t want to push. She wouldn’t want to be pushed herself, so she’s glad when Mithian doesn’t ask her in turn, just changes the subject back to the art exhibit, a few observations about the paintings that sound incredibly poised given what they’re on their way to do—or would if she weren’t also clutching onto Elena’s hand like she’s afraid they’ll lose each other.

Her flat’s in a nice building, as it turns out, but not one of the terribly posh ones Elena would have expected, given who she is. She doesn’t mention it, though, because that’s probably horribly gauche and it doesn’t matter either way, other than being less intimidating. She’s never been very good at posh. The flat itself, once they get inside, is a good size, clean and with lots of art on the walls. “Your place is lovely,” Elena says, remembering her manners as she shrugs her coat off again.

Mithian doesn’t bother answering, just peels off her own coat, hangs it up, steps out of her heels, and backs Elena up against the wall. “You should see the bedroom,” she whispers, and kisses Elena again. Nothing interrupts them this time, no thought of fellow club-goers watching, no one nearby to remind them they aren’t alone, and Elena falls into the kiss, parts her lips for Mithian’s tongue and isn’t the least bit surprised when she feels her back hit the wall. Mithian seems to quite like manhandling her, and she doesn’t object in the slightest.

Somehow, in a blur of mouths and the occasional haphazard loss of a piece of clothing, they manage to blindly stumble the ten feet to Mithian’s bedroom door, at which point Mithian actually _picks her up_ in a stunning display of cavewoman ability and puts her on her back on the bed. Elena allows herself to feel like a ravished romance novel heroine for five seconds of Mithian’s mouth on her neck and hands tugging impatiently at the fastening on her trousers, and then she fights back, grapples them over until she’s on top, knees on either side of Mithian’s hips.

“You’ve got me here,” says Mithian, voice trembling a little, eyes dark. “What are you going to do with me?”

Elena grins, wild and probably too wide. “Everything.” That, much to her satisfaction, makes Mithian’s breath catch, and she bends down to mouth at Mithian’s breast through the fabric of her dress, which is unzipped in back but not yet off entirely. Mithian’s hands come up to clutch Elena’s shoulders, first tentative and then firm when Elena doesn’t shrug her off.

It’s hard to decide what to do first—she’s confident enough in the way Mithian can’t stop smiling at her that she knows this won’t be her only opportunity to do this, but she’s always been fussy about the first time she tries anything new, including sex with a new person, and she wants it to be as good as any first time ever is. There’s a lot she’d _like_ to do that is pretty firmly on the list of things that most people do not have the ability to do, thanks to the Rogue for helping her figure out how to put her powers to uses aside from fighting crime, but that’s for another time, after many more dates and a conversation about superpowers. Still, there’s a dizzying amount of possibility, and Elena decides to start by pushing Mithian’s skirt up her thighs and slipping her fingers into—

“I’m pretty sure those are lace,” says Elena, lifting her mouth from Mithian’s breast and unable to contain her delight as she looks at Mithian’s rucked-up skirt to confirm what her fingers are feeling. Red lace pants, of all things, and skimpy, and they seem out-of-place on the ever-so-demure Mithian King except that they don’t at all.

“Can’t blame me for being optimistic,” Mithian returns, smile going wicked, and drags Elena down for a kiss. Elena goes without objection, because Mithian’s mouth is sort of amazing, and works her hand into her pants, fumbling with the angle until she has it right, working at Mithian’s clit and sliding a finger inside as well. It’s been too long since she’s been with a woman, she decides in the midst of it—she’d almost forgotten what it’s like, the softness of it all, the slick, the … everything, really.

“Let me know if I’m doing anything wrong.” The words are practically indecipherable, mumbled into Mithian’s mouth because she doesn’t want to pull away, but Mithian nods anyway so Elena hopes it’ll all work out fine.

Mithian, to Elena’s surprise, talks constantly once Elena relinquishes her mouth so she can get a better angle. It’s a constant litany of “oh, sweetheart, darling, right there, _please_ ” like they’ve been doing this for ages, known each other for ages, and Elena concentrates on her task and grins into Mithian’s bent leg when it gets to be too much. When Mithian comes, tightening around Elena’s fingers, she just gasps out an inhale, the beginning of some syllable swallowed in it, and Elena smiles up at her, shuffles up the bed again to kiss her and let Mithian wind her hands around her neck, kissing back messily. “My turn,” she says after a few minutes, and pushes Elena until she obediently rolls over to her back again.

Mithian’s stronger than she looks—she looks like a dancer, all long thin limbs, but she holds Elena down like she doesn’t ever intend to let her go anywhere, and Elena’s restless shifting doesn’t move her at all. Instead, she just _watches_ for a minute, a little smile on her face like she’s planning something and her chest still heaving a little from her orgasm. “Are you going to do something?” Elena wonders after a little while, more to goad her than out of any sort of impatience.

“I’m going to do a lot of things. Tonight, though …” She palms Elena’s hips. “First of all, I’m going to get you undressed, how are you still wearing clothes? Then you’ll just have to see. Let me know if I do anything you don’t want.”

“Okay, then.” Mithian smiles, like that’s all she was waiting for, and gets the rest of Elena’s clothes off in record time, trousers and pants and the necklace she probably should have removed first because it has glass beads on it and she doesn’t really want to smash it in the middle of sex. Elena lets herself be moved around, more than willing to admit that she’s rather turned on by all the manhandling, and can’t say she’s too surprised when she ends up with Mithian kneeling between her spread legs, eyebrows raised in inquiry. It takes Elena a second to realize she’s meant to say yes or no. “Yeah, go on.”

Mithian starts out by kissing her all over, from shoulder to breasts (and she stays a while, judging by the noises she makes she’s a breast woman, and Elena will have to remember that for the next time) to stomach, her hands mapping the path out ahead of her. Elena isn’t surprised when Mithian finally slides her hands up to Elena’s thighs to part her legs just that bit more, but she does arch up into the touch of her mouth, the first tentative flick of a tongue against her clit.

Once Mithian starts, she’s deep in it right away, her mouth working Elena over with expert skill and her hands clutching bruises into her thighs, hard enough that it’s just barely more good than it is painful. Elena gives herself over, just holds onto the control she’s got to keep her powers from doing anything and ignores everything else. It doesn’t take long to come, after that, especially not when Mithian gets two fingers up inside her and presses in just the right place and _hums_.

While Elena’s chest is still heaving, Mithian climbs back up the bed to kiss her, the taste of Elena still on her mouth. Elena kisses back, messy and uncoordinated, until Mithian seems satisfied, and then they stay on their backs next to each other, breath evening out. “I’ve got afternoon shift at the coffeeshop tomorrow,” Elena offers after a while. “I’m perfectly willing to walk-of-shame across town in the morning if you let me out of bed long enough to text my dad tonight.”

Mithian groans. “Oh God, you’re going to kill me.”

“Or I can leave,” she hastens to say.

“Don’t you _dare_.” Mithian’s on top of her again in a blur of moment, smiling like she’s got a secret. “You can get out of bed as long as we do a second round first.”

Elena grins. “If I must, I must,” she says, and rolls them over onto their sides to start it all again.

*

Something is wrong in the city.

It’s not one of the periodic upswings in crime, like there’s a new bunch of idiots in the city who decide to test their luck against the supers. It’s not the dissatisfaction that comes around election season, everyone a bit brusque with each other. It’s not even one of the weeks where the whole city seems to be in a bad mood, under some sort of black cloud. Elena doesn’t even know if the other supers notice it.

Things go missing. Trashcans, unattended carts, a broken-down car that’s been by the river for years, nobody ever bothering to remove it. A flock of birds flying over during Elena’s patrol goes abruptly silent, and when she follows their trail on a whim she can’t find a sign of where they’ve gone to roost. Things appear, too: a patch of little purple flowers under the bridge, a few piles of rubbish and compost in odd places. It’s all little things, nothing really out of the ordinary, nothing anybody would even think to notice or connect.

Except everyone in the city seems on edge, a little nervous, or even scared. They don’t talk about it, don’t talk about why, don’t even seem to act on it or _know_ they’re nervous, but they jump when Elena walks out of an alley when they might not have before, and it takes them an extra second to relax. Everyone who comes to the coffee shop wants an extra shot of espresso, even Mithian, who faithfully appears at 8:15 with a wink and a smile for Elena every time she’s got the morning shift, though she looks increasingly tired. She’s always apologetic and says they’ll schedule a date soon. (Anyone else, Elena would think she was making excuses, but she remembers waking up in Mithian’s bed the morning after they had sex with the comforter lumped on top of her and a note signed with a heart reading _I didn’t have the heart to wake you. See you soon_ and pancakes staying warm in the oven.)

Elena doesn’t bring it up with any of the supers until she ends up on patrol with Huntress a little over a week after her date with Mithian. Even then, she only brings it up because only Huntress’s quick thinking kept Elena from being pepper sprayed in the face by a woman they were passing by on the street on their way to the bridge. “Something’s the matter,” she says, out of the blue, almost two hours after the pepper spray incident.

Huntress goes on alert right away. “What do you see?”

“Not like that, no, sorry. It’s … in general. In the city. Something’s wrong, this week. Maybe longer than that.” She’s felt unsettled since Grunhilda died, but that doesn’t really mean much—it could just mean she’s unsettled because of Grunhilda. But _something_ is off, or she hopes she isn’t imagining it. “If you listen in on conversations, people keep saying this or that has gone missing, something they’d usually never even miss or take for granted. And everyone’s just jumpy, and … tell me you’ve noticed.”

The wonderful thing about Huntress is that she never dismisses anything like that. Instead, she takes a minute to think about it, walking slowly along the route they’ve chosen. Patrol is starting to wind down for the night—a quiet night for crime, although everyone seems to be looking over their shoulders. “I haven’t. But that doesn’t mean nothing’s the matter,” she says at last. “What do you think it is?”

“Hell if I know. Everything just feels off, and not in a way I’ve run across before.”

They pass a few more streets in silence. “I don’t know. I don’t know if I’m on edge or the city is, but I suppose if you think about it … there’s nothing I can think of that would cause it to happen, though, everyone just suddenly jumpy, things missing. Has anyone else mentioned it?”

“No, I haven’t dared talk about it with anyone else. It sounds silly when I say it out loud. Trashcans missing, flowers growing in odd places … it doesn’t seem that bad.”

“Don’t dismiss yourself like that,” Huntress scolds. “You’ve got good instincts. I trust them. I trust _you_ , and I’m not the only one. If you think something’s wrong, I’ll keep my eyes out, and I’ll pass word around that others should do the same. If nothing else, it’s better safe than sorry.”

Elena sighs. “I suppose so. As long as you don’t think my judgment is compromised because of the … because of recent events. That’s why I haven’t mentioned it on the boards yet.”

“You aren’t compromised at _all_.” Huntress catches her by the shoulder and looks her in the eyes, or presumably does since the hood prevents doing it properly. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course I do. Everything just shook me up for a while there. A grad student from the university assured me I’m not going to open up a Sidhe portal by accident, but it’s still rattling to know I’ve got their magic inside me and don’t know if it’ll be activated at some point.”

“I’ll protect you from anything I can.” It’s not much of a promise when Huntress is such a physical fighter and the magic is something _inside_ her, but the steadiness in her voice helps steady Elena.

“I’ll protect myself, if I can, but it’s good to know I’ve got backup.”

“Always.” There are sirens in the distance. “Do you want to go see what that is?”

Elena shakes off the conversation. “Sure, let’s see if there’s any trouble.”

“And I’ll keep an eye out for anything odd, I promise. I’d rather not be taken by surprise if something’s going to go horribly wrong.”

“Definitely, me too.” She tries not to think about Huntress’s hand on her shoulder, and does her best to make a joke to forget it. “Especially as I think I’ve sort of maybe got a girlfriend. Or someone who might become a girlfriend. If the world is ending I’d rather get a few more dates in first.”

Huntress laughs, a little awkwardly, and pulls away. Elena does her best to hide a wince. “I can see where that would be the case. All the more reason to keep the city from falling down around our ears, then.”

“Exactly,” says Elena. “Now let’s go, or the police will have all the fun before we show up.”

“We can’t have that, can we?” The Huntress gives her an easy launch to a foothold to climb up on the nearest roof, where it will be easiest to get to the trouble unimpeded, and jumps up after her a moment later. Elena’s already off at a run, hoping to leave the conversation behind.

*

Mithian turns up at the coffee shop at three in the afternoon the next day, right as Elena’s shift is finishing, wearing what looks like yoga pants and a t-shirt. “Sorry I missed coming in this morning,” she says right away. “I’m taking a mental health day from work, and that involved sleeping in. Can I have my usual, please?”

“Sure, you’ll be my last drink before I get off shift.” That probably sounds too hopeful. Judging by the way Gilli snickers from his post at the espresso machine, he thinks so too.

“Are you totally knackered, then? I thought I might go for a walk in the park, and I’d be glad for some company.”

Elena is knackered, from work and extra patrols and the constant niggling worry that something’s the matter in her city, but that doesn’t mean she’s about to turn down the opportunity for a date. “I think I can deal with a walk, as long as it isn’t too strenuous. Sometimes I jog, but not after eight-hour work shifts.”

“I’m feeling lazy today, so I won’t make you run anywhere.”

Elena hands her the change for her drink, and Mithian stuffs it all in the tip jar with a grin, not even looking at it. “I really hope you aren’t tipping a lot as some sort of wooing gesture, I’m not a prostitute.”

“Making up for you paying for my drinks for a week, that’s all.” Elena rolls her eyes but lets it slide, moving on to making the actual drink while Gilli steps easily up to the register and Annis pokes her head out from the back room to remind Elena that she’s done for the day. She has making Mithian’s drink down to an art at this point, so she gets it done as quickly as possible and hands it over the counter before taking her apron off, getting tangled up in a way she refuses to blush over even though Mithian is grinning at her.

“Do you mind me being a mess?” Elena asks once she’s out from behind the counter and waving at Gilli as she leaves. “I don’t live too far away, I can change.”

Mithian laughs. “You aren’t a mess, or if you are I am as well.” Elena decides it would be a bit too telling to tell her she still looks like a supermodel in her day-off clothes.

“Let’s go, then. Lead on.”

It’s easy to fall in step alongside Mithian—like one of her quieter patrols, just strolling along through the city people-watching more than listening for trouble. There’s still the niggling feeling that something’s the matter, but it seems muted in the afternoon sunshine with Mithian filling the silence with office gossip about people Elena doesn’t know. The park is quiet for the weather and the time of year, no kids running around yelling their heads off and all the dogs on leashes instead of playing fetch, but Elena lets herself ignore it. Mithian frowns around as they step onto the bike path that circles through the park, where there’s only a few intrepid runners having their afternoon exercise. “Is it just me, or is it quiet here today?”

Elena blinks. It’s rather startling, hearing her worries out of someone else’s mouth, even if Mithian sounds as though she’s just commenting on the weather. She notices, at least, which is comfort enough. Elena and Huntress aren’t the only two who think something’s off. “It’s quiet,” she says. “Has been for a week or so, actually.”

“Odd, when the weather’s so nice. I suppose things go through phases, though.”

Mithian shrugs, dismissing the subject, and Elena lets her do it. Mithian’s a lawyer, a civilian—at least as far as she’s told Elena, and thus it’s what Elena’s going to assume. Elena doesn’t have the right to press her, to see if she’s noticed anything else out of the ordinary. “I suppose they do,” she says, and casts around for a different subject. “What made you need a mental health day today, if you don’t mind my asking? Just tired?”

“Tired, caseload’s driving me to madness … plus it seems that everyone I encounter is in a terrible mood and lawyers in a bad mood are a formidable crew.” There it is again, like Mithian is _hinting_ , but again she changes the subject before Elena can start to wonder too much just what she’s noticed and why. “One of the senior partners started shouting at his secretary yesterday and she spent the rest of the day being as willfully unhelpful to him as possible, which meant that we poor associates got saddled with secretarial duties whenever we walked past his office.”

She says it like she’s amused, so Elena responds in kind, asking her about work and learning about the people there as she hasn’t had time to do when they’ve talked before. Elena trades her stories about Sefa and Gilli and George and Annis and everyone else she works with, and sometimes her dad when Mithian brings up the mayor. “What do you do for fun?” Mithian asks when they start their second circuit of the bike path. “I feel as if I ought to know already.”

Elena doesn’t have much time for fun, in between work and patrols and the occasional class and all the boring cleanup necessary to keep her secret identity secret, but everyone has their little luxuries—the First Knight always lingers a little longer at bars where they’ve got football playing on the screens, and Lady Smith knits, judging by the handmade Christmas ornaments she gave everyone last year. “Reading, mostly. I’ve a comics habit left over from my childhood, too. Sometimes wrestling, when I need something physical. I used to want to be a cartoonist, but I’m terribly out of practice. How about you?”

“Physical things, mostly.” She smiles and gestures around the park. “Running, yoga, some karate, on the rare occasions when I have time I do dance classes.”

“Yoga, is it?” Elena leers at her and grins when it makes Mithian laugh. “God, though, you know how to make a girl feel unmotivated.” As an active super she’s got to be in shape, but she doesn’t train much these days other than going to the gym when she hasn’t been on patrol in a few days and stretching before she goes out. Sometimes on a quiet night she’ll spar with whoever she’s patrolling with, but that’s rare these days.

Mithian takes Elena’s hand and squeezes it. “You’re welcome to join me any time you’d like. I think I would enjoy that. For runs or whatever.”

“Runs, maybe. The rest of it? I’m willing to bet you’re at a much higher level than I am.” Her powers make her stretchier than the average person, but her one experience with yoga ended in quite a lot of falling over and not a great deal of serenity.

Mithian bumps her hip against Elena’s, steering them out of the way of someone on a bike in a great hurry. “I’ll just have to teach you. You learn a few tricks, after a while.”

For a longing second, Elena thinks about taking her up on the blatant offer in her tone and going back to her flat for the second time for a bout of athletic afternoon sex. It would be wonderful, an opportunity to feel like a normal girl her age, just regular dating and kissing with a wonderful girl who’s far too good for her. Instead, Elena has to remember she only slept three hours last night and then worked from seven to three, that she works the same shift tomorrow and then will have to go on patrol again, then two more shifts and another patrol before her day off. “I’ll look forward to learning them from you, then. Though maybe not in a classroom setting.” She winks but then makes a point of yawning. “God, sorry, I’ve got this terrible habit of staying up late before my early morning shifts.”

Mithian, with all the chivalry that would make Elena giggle if she weren’t so terrible earnest about it, drags Elena to the side of the path and then turns to face her directly, ghosting her thumb across what must be one of the spectacular rings around Elena’s eyes. She doesn’t bother using her powers to smooth them out, most times, but this morning she at least lessened them so she didn’t look quite so dead on her feet. They’re still pretty terrible, judging by the way Mithian frowns and holds her hand a little tighter. “I was going to make you a lewd offer but now all I want to do is put you straight to bed,” she says.

“I may have to get home for a nap soon, but we can finish this circuit of the path first.” She’s exhausted, but that doesn’t mean she wants the date to be over. Being with Mithian is the closest she’s felt to being a normal person for a long time.

“If you’re sure.” When Elena nods, she just nods in return and goes back to talking about the various exercise classes she takes, and then her habit of picking up magazines on various subjects every time she’s shopping for groceries. Elena just floats along, barely commenting now that she’s acknowledged how exhausted she is, and enjoys the way Mithian puts a hand on her back to steer her around.

“I should get home. My dad will be home from work soon and I should get some food in him before I go to bed,” Elena says when they finally make it back to the entrance of the park. “We’ll do this again soon, though. Right? I haven’t scared you off by being a total zombie on this date?”

Mithian laughs and kisses her on the forehead. “Honestly, I don’t think there’s much you could do right now that would scare me off. Call me soon, though? I’d love to see you when you’re fully awake. We can do dinner and a movie or something equally cliché.”

“It’s a date,” Elena promises. “I’m at work again tomorrow, if you happen to want to stop by for your coffee as you get to work.” Mithian makes a face, presumably at the thought of having to go back to work after her day off, and Elena kisses her because she can’t not, leaning into it and smiling when they pull apart. “And either way, I’ll call you soon. I have a day off coming up.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Mithian says, and waves her off.

*

The flowers are growing everywhere. They’re flimsy little five-petaled things, a sort of unenthused purple, and they smell like a garden all on their own, with something herbal like they should be scenting soup of garnishing a salad. Elena sees them in the park before they get mowed down, everywhere the grass grows, even a few times growing up through cracks in the pavement like dandelions.

Everyone seems to think it’s just a large crop of violets or forget-me-nots, and collectively the kids of the city seem to think all the flowers are wonderful, picking bouquets. Elena feels a little unsettled by them, though, because she’s never been good at biology or botany or anything like that but she’s still sure she doesn’t recognize them. She takes out all the flower-identifying guides she can find at the library and looks online as well, and it still takes a week to find the right entry on an obscure nature blog that does factoids about rare specimens (though in her own defense she’s busy with work and with Mithian, who she sees on her day off and then again mid-way through the week for dinner and an early-evening shag before she has to plead a very early morning and goes off on patrol).

“The flowers,” she says to Huntress the next time they’re on patrol together—it’s the first time since she told Huntress something’s the matter, both of them busy and a bit off their usual schedules because the Smugglers are out of the city on business and they’re filling in the gaps. “I mentioned the flowers last time, right? How they’re part of what’s wrong?”

Huntress nods and picks one out of a little patch on the side of the street they’re on. “I’ve been seeing them more and more often. No one else seems to think it’s odd, though.”

“People don’t always notice unusual things, even when they’re right in front of their noses. That’s what they’ve got us for.” She takes a deep breath. “It’s a Sidhe flower. From their homeworld.”

“Shit.” Huntress puts a hand up like she wants to run it through her hair, then stops. “Changeling, _shit_ , have you told anybody else?”

“Not yet. I’m planning on letting Dr. Gaius know, though. He’ll get the word out. The research I could do said that it’s one of the few species of plants from their world that survives here but that there’ve only been a few scattered specimens since the portal closed. The sudden upswing in them definitely isn’t normal.”

Huntress paces a few steps forward before coming back to where Elena is standing. “Are they poisonous? Harbingers of something? Magical?”

“None of the three, as far as I’m aware, but I haven’t been able to find much information about them. The portal was only open for seven years, they barely had enough time to work on diplomacy, let alone xenobotany.” Elena sighs. “Maybe magical, but only in the way that any Sidhe thing is magical—their world is made of the stuff. As for harbingers … well, they could have a really long germination cycle, but I’m not really that optimistic.”

“Nor am I.” Huntress’s tone is grimmer than Elena’s heard it in a long time. “I’m also willing to bet that this happening so soon after that mess with Grunhilda Fairweather isn’t just a coincidence.”

Elena has been ignoring that as well as she’s able, but Huntress deserves all the information and hunches she has—all the supers do, if there’s going to be a threat. “That’s the theory I’m working off as well—which means that most likely all of this has something to do with me.” She cuts Huntress off before the sudden hand on her arm can turn into words. “Not saying I caused it, but I’m involved somehow, aren’t I? If all these flowers and I are all that’s left of Sidhe magic in this world, then I’ve got to be.”

For a second, she thinks Huntress is going to assure her that’s not the case, in which case she’ll have to be disappointed in her, but instead she just sighs and looks away. “Probably. Almost certainly. Talk to Dr. Gaius, though, to have him confirm or deny or consult about it. We’ll work out what to do from there.”

“Like I said, I plan to.” Elena debates whether she wants to say the next thing on her mind, but she’s beginning to think it’s something she’ll have to say eventually. If she hurts Huntress’s feelings, so be it. “I’m not someone you need to protect, you know? You’ve been worrying about me since I took time off patrols for dealing with Grunhilda Fairweather, and you can’t do that. If you don’t trust me on my own on the streets anymore that’s a problem.”

Huntress starts walking them down a narrow alley, then urges Elena up the fire escape halfway down it. She doesn’t talk again till they’re on the roof and looking out over the city, walking towards the river again, and when she does she sounds exhausted. “It’s not that I don’t trust you. It’s hell … it’s awful, watching all my friends run into danger every night. I know it’s horrible for everyone, you probably know that too. Feel it too. But you … Changeling, understand, you’re the best friend I have, in costume or out of it. And until Grunhilda and the Sidhe magic showed up I thought you were as safe as any of us ever are. It’s been rather a wrench knowing that you aren’t, not really.”

Elena’s known the terror of wondering if someone isn’t going to come home since she was old enough to know what being a cop means in this town, and she knows it’s only luck she hasn’t lost anyone yet. It’s hard to believe that Huntress isn’t used to the dread, considering Elena can’t remember being without it, but maybe she was sheltered before she took to the streets. Anything is possible, anyway. “I know the feeling, but you’ve no right getting protective. That just means that neither of us is at our best, and we can’t afford that, not if something’s going to happen with the Sidhe.”

“Right.” Huntress sounds annoyed, and Elena holds her breath. She wouldn’t blame her for being angry at Elena’s bluntness, but it had to be said. None of them can afford to tiptoe around each other. After a minute of huffy silence, Huntress unbends and finally turns to face Elena. “You’re right. I know you’re right. But when I’ve only just—no, you know what? That doesn’t matter. Coddling you is unacceptable. Do what you think is best about this, and keep me updated on any assistance I can give you. Better?”

“Better,” Elena confirms. Then: “Come on, I’ll race you to the bridge, I’ve got a camera with me so we can get some good pictures of the flowers.”

Huntress laughs, letting the awkwardness go as Elena would have hoped. “You’re going to try to race me? Which one of us has the superspeed again?”

Elena just grins at her and takes off at a sprint, and laughs out loud when Huntress outstrips her barely five seconds later, running off until she’s barely in sight.

*

Saturday afternoon, Elena holes herself up in a bookshop with her laptop and deals with e-mails from Dr. Gaius and Merlin Emrys. Both of them have confirmed that the flowers all over the city are from the Sidhe world, and Merlin adds that they seem to have some spell on them to make it so no one really notices them until they’re pointed out, something he thinks is natural to the species since there’s very little literature on them as opposed to some other plants from the Sidhe. Her inbox is full of Dr. Gaius talking about natural selection and a hundred other things she would normally find fascinating, if incomprehensible, but there’s so little information about what they mean and if they have anything to do with Elena that she wants to beat her head against something instead.

“You look way too stressed for a weekend,” someone says above her, and Elena starts and looks up to find a girl she doesn’t recognize smiling down. She’s got a high, girlish voice, but she must be Elena’s age. “Something the matter?”

Elena blinks at her for a second—long hair like something out of a pre-Raphaelite painting, tight orange shirt—but she still refuses to resolve herself into anyone Elena recognizes. “Sorry, do I know you?”

“Oh, gosh, I’m always forgetting to introduce myself.” She sticks out her hand and Elena shakes it. “Sophia, we don’t know each other but you looked stressed. I thought maybe I’d … offer you a coffee? Or something.”

“I’ve got a girlfriend,” Elena says blankly, because she has no tact whatsoever, and then winces when Sophia blushes. “God, wow, that just came out, didn’t it? You could work here and be offering me coffee from the back or something.”

Sophia laughs. Well, giggles. “No, no, it was … well, it doesn’t have to be a date? It’s more that I’m new to the city and thought I might try to make a friend. This is horrendously awkward.”

Normally, Elena would say yes. Or she thinks she would, it isn’t as if girls often wander up to her in shops and ask if she wants a date or just to be friends. Sophia seems nice, anyway, and she’d be willing to go with her, but she’s got a date with Mithian in an hour and it’s looking as if she might not have to go home afterwards, so she isn’t going to put it off. “I’ve got a date pretty soon, unfortunately, and I probably shouldn’t stay too much longer. Welcome to the city, though.” She shuts her laptop; there’s nothing helpful on it anyway, just a noncommittal warning from Dr. Gaius to be careful what she does around the flowers and a great many hypothetical theories from Merlin, none of which have been substantiated at all. “You actually interrupted me at just the right time, though, thank you. I’ve got to get home and change.”

“Of course.” Sophia chews on her lip, and then goes into her pocket to pull out the stub of a pencil and a scrap of paper that looks like a receipt. She writes her number down in neat, looping script and hands it over to Elena. “If you’ve ever got time, I’d love to do coffee, or drinks or something. Just as friends, of course. You seem nice.”

“I may take you up on that,” says Elena, even though her automatic response is to say she’s always busy, with dates and work and hobbies. She could make time for a new friend, but she’s wary. Maybe stupidly so, but she is. “Thanks for this. And good luck in the city, if I don’t end up having time to call you.”

Like magic, her phone goes, and Elena makes an apologetic face as she tries to pack her things up and answer it at the same time. Sophia, to her surprise, helps her, stuffing her headphones and a few other things into her bag when she almost drops them. “My father finished with me early,” Mithian says, voice bright, when Elena manages a hello.

“That’s wonderful! I’m just finishing up an errand and I’ve got to go home and change, but then I’m all yours.”

“Lovely.” It’s like she can hear Mithian beaming. Elena grins shamelessly at her phone and gives Sophia a thumbs up and a mouthed thank you when she notices her still standing there, hitching her bag up on her shoulder. “What if I meet you at your place in half an hour? If you’re okay with me coming over, that is.”

Elena shoulders her way out of the shop, waving both at Sophia and at the girl behind the counter, and keeps smiling. “It’s fine—your place is just nicer and doesn’t have both thin walls and a parent, which is why we’re always at yours. Dad’s off work, so he’ll be pleased to meet you. Finally. I … might have been talking about you a bit.” Her dad is worried about her and Mithian, but that’s because she’s a super stupid enough to date the mayor’s daughter, not anything about Mithian herself. At least he won’t bring it up while Mithian is there.

“Well, good. Because I’ve been talking about you a _lot_. My father and quite a few of my friends want to meet you.”

That’s a sort of terrifying thought, considering Mithian’s dad is the _mayor_ and her friends are all equally posh—she’s sort of on the edge of the social group that clusters around the PM’s son, if Elena’s reading the situation right. “Oh,” she squeaks, and thinks about being offended when Mithian laughs. “Your people are all terrifying,” she defends. Her mum was posh, old money in the city, but Elena avoids that side of her extended family, because they always look at her as if they’re waiting for her to use the wrong fork and ruin everything.

“They’re not so bad. They’ll like you because I like you.”

“The art gallery people were nice.” Elena looks down at the pavement, where there are more flowers sprouting through every day, cracking it but not making people trip as far as she can tell. Dr. Gaius and Merlin had best figure something out _fast_. “Can’t we hang out with the art gallery people?”

A door shuts on Mithian’s end of the phone. “Sure, though I don’t know them as well. And it isn’t as though I hang out with Arthur and his friends all the time.” She pauses, and when she speaks again her voice is a lot softer. “I don’t have a lot of close friends, really.”

“Neither do I.” Except supers, and introducing girlfriends to them is sort of an impossibility. Especially if Mithian’s a super herself, and _especially_ if she’s the Sorceress, who continues to be the only one Elena could imagine her being. “I’ll meet them if you don’t mind all of my dad’s cop friends telling you they’ve got weapons and know how to use them. They’ve been hoping to give that speech to whoever I date since I was fourteen, I think they worked out a script and everything.”

When Mithian laughs again, she sounds relieved. “I’ll look forward to it. Now, we’ll both get across the city a lot faster if we hang up, so I’ll see you in a little while, okay?”

“Okay. See you soon,” she says, and hangs up. She hurries through the city—it’s a quiet afternoon, a little cloudy and on the edge of a drizzle, and everyone out on the street looks tired and grumpy, like it’s been a long week and even the weekend can’t stop that. Even Mithian sounded tired, through her smiles. Sophia, as far as Elena can tell, is the only person she’s talked to in a week who hasn’t been in some sort of bad mood, and that’s probably just because she’s new to the city and hasn’t had time for it to seep into her yet.

When Elena gets home, her dad’s watching some news show, which is having a little segment on the Knight Brigade busting up a ring of organized crime at the moment. He smiles at her, the expression evening out the furrows in his forehead. “Productive time out there, Ellie?”

She sighs. “Not really. I’m really better at things going wrong in the moment than preparing for something like this. Mithian’s coming over to pick me up soon, if you want to meet her. I’m going up to change.”

He reels her in when she passes to pull her down and kiss her on the forehead. “You’ll figure it out, duck.”

“I’m going to dump this in the Prince’s lap, see if I don’t. He still owes me a favor from that robbery where they got the drop on him,” she says, and wanders off up the stairs to put on clothes good enough to go out to dinner with Mithian in.

She’s always been quick to change clothes, and she cheats with her hair and uses her powers to make it manageable, so by the time Mithian gets to her house she’s flipping through a magazine in the kitchen, since it’s closest to the door. Mithian rings the bell, which no one ever does since only her dad’s police friends ever come over and they don’t bother, and Elena opens it and gives her a kiss hello. “You look nice,” says Mithian, stepping inside and looking around.

“So do you.”

“I’m in here,” Elena’s dad calls, because he’s a terrible human being.

“You don’t seem to be moving any time soon, either,” Elena yells back, but she leads Mithian down the hall anyway and pulls her inside the living room, where her dad had the manners to mute the television in order to squint threateningly at his daughter’s girlfriend. “Dad, this is Mithian King. Mithian, Godwin Lord. Dad, _behave_.”

“Good to meet you, Ms. King,” her dad says, rolling his eyes at her. “Elena’s told me a lot about you.”

“The same to you,” says Mithian, before her attention gets captured by the news. “Sorry, there’s just …”

Elena looks automatically to where there’s a scrolling headline about the disappearances of some of the city’s homeless, hard to count but noticeable. “Something is so, so wrong,” she whispers before she can remind herself that Mithian doesn’t know she’s on the front lines of taking care of it.

Mithian doesn’t seem to care, just squeezes her hand tight. “Something is,” she says, and turns back to Elena’s dad to finish charming him entirely.

*

While the four most powerful supers in the country spend most of their time in Albion (whether that’s because it’s where they grew up or because it’s the site of the only known portal to another world in Europe and they want to keep an eye on it Elena doesn’t know), they do occasionally get called off to deal with large problems elsewhere. So, when there’s a lab accident that results in a large and terrifying genetically engineered monster terrorizing London, Sorceress and the Prince get called to deal with it, Lady Smith gets lent out to help design some sort of invisible flying thing in America, and one of Warlock’s nemeses is spotted in Argentina, leading to him going off on a manhunt.

Normally, Elena doesn’t even notice when the big four are gone—Albion’s got plenty of street-level crime, same as any city, but the big stuff never really touches her, and since she was a child there honestly hasn’t been that much of it, other than the weeks when Sorceress decides she likes the High Priestess more than she does her other friends, or that particularly memorable time when she was new to the streets and the Black Queen made a final bid for revenge. This time, though, she feels anxious, not liking the coincidence of all four of them being gone when she can’t shake the feeling that something terrible is going to happen.

It doesn’t help that she barely sees Mithian. She’s increased her patrols, and whenever she lets herself have a night off she has to balance between seeing her dad and seeing Mithian, who seems to be going through a hectic period at work and is just as useless and exhausted as Elena when they happen to be free the same nights. (It is, to Elena’s relief, proof that Mithian isn’t the Sorceress, and she thereafter leaves off theorizing about Mithian’s superpowers or lack thereof, if only because she’d rather concentrate on more important things.) Mithian turns up, regular as ever, at the coffee shop at 8:15 every morning Elena is working, but most often they barely have time to smile at each other before she’s got to run off.

Huntress, on the other hand, she sees almost every night she’s on patrol. Since Elena’s known her, she’s never let on when she’s been tired or injured or worried, but she’s a little quieter now, on the lookout for something concrete to go after the way Elena is. At the end of a night, sometimes she’ll even yawn before excusing herself. On top of that, she stays closer than she ever has before—Elena has always patrolled more often with her than with anyone else, but now they’re together nearly as often as the Smugglers are. Huntress even leans on her a little sometimes if they’re standing on a rooftop or a side street waiting to see what’s coming next, warm against Elena’s side. She never does anything more, and it isn’t that Elena dislikes it (Huntress is one of her favorite people, even if they don’t have each other’s proper names, and there’s always been a bit of a crush), but it makes her feel horribly guilty, like maybe she’s cheating on Mithian even though they haven’t done a thing.

One night, she ends up on patrol with the Rogue (and with most of the rest of the Knight Brigade somewhere in the city, as well as the Lady Smuggler, so she really should go home and get a rest except she wants to be there if something goes wrong), feeling blue and anxious and wondering if he’ll laugh it off if she brings up the flowers, the missing people, the general sense of unease. Nobody is laughing it off, not really, but they aren’t doing much about it either, even with Elena and now Huntress mentioning it on the forums when they can (and even Warlock, in absentia, making a quick comment that they should keep their eyes on it). As it turns out, she doesn’t have to. “So, you going to tell me what’s wrong, or do we need to spar until I beat it out of you?”

“As if you could,” she scoffs, mostly for form’s sake. She and Rogue may have broken up, but he still knows her better than anyone on the streets but Huntress, and he knows that sometimes she needs to do something physical to get her thoughts in order. That he’s offering a spar instead of sex means that either he’s quite serious about Bastet (who she _thinks_ he’s still with, though it’s hard to be sure) or he thinks something’s going on with her. She decides not to ask; she’s got quite enough on her mind already. “But yeah, let’s. Been too long since I had the practice.”

Rogue knows all the spots in the city where nobody will look twice or call the police on two supers fighting it out. This time he takes her on a jog to a quiet spot in one of the city’s less-frequented parks, where he cheerily terrifies a few men in the midst of some sort of drug transaction before dragging Elena into a little grove of trees where they’ll be obscured from sight. “Pinning is a win, no superstrength for that bit from me but all other powers encouraged,” he says, squaring off. She nods. “Best of five, and the loser has to tell me what’s made Albion’s cheeriest super so mopey.”

“Loser has to buy me an ice cream at that terrible all-night shop,” she counters. “And tell me why he’s so interested in Butterfly’s mood.”

Rogue laughs and lunges, because he’s never been one to believe in being a good sport about anything. Elena steps to the side and spins to face him when he goes past her, aiming a kick above his knee. “You should be better at coming up with stories by now. Who in this city would call Butterfly cheery?”

Elena makes a face and makes her arm stone-hard before he hits it, making him hiss and shake his hand out. She catches herself before the weight unbalances her and dances back before he can swipe out again. “You could at least pretend that was a good cover. Really, though, I’m worried that something’s going on with the Sidhe, especially now the Big Four are out of town. There, I gave you that information without you even needing to pin me.”

“The Sidhe are showy,” he points out, going on the attack and backing her up three paces before she can regain any ground, ducking his swing, and lashing out with a hand humming with electricity, a trick she’s learned since they last sparred. “This isn’t showy. Flowers, an old supporter whose body couldn’t hold their magic anymore … ouch, fuck, that’s a good trick but I am getting you back for it later.”

“And missing people?”

“Worrying,” admits Rogue, and punches her in the gut. “I get why it’s upsetting you, especially with Ms. Fairweather being a personal connection of yours and the information she gave you, but I still think the Sidhe wouldn’t be covering the streets with pretty flowers if they were gearing up for a fight.”

Elena launches for him and uses one of Huntress’s favorite tricks to swing off a tree and get a bit of height advantage on him to cling to his back. He gets traction and tips her until she has to somersault off or fall. It still puts her off balance enough that she trips when he swings his leg out and goes down, pinned by the shoulders a second later with him looking down at her with a distinct air of smugness. “One to you,” she says, and lets him help her up for the next round.

They spar for a few minutes in silence, Elena ducking and weaving because with Rogue most of her strength lies in not allowing herself to be caught. “Do you know something about the Sidhe you haven’t mentioned?” he asks after she slips out of his hold easily as an eel before he can toss her on the ground.

“No, not really. It’s just instinct, has me on edge. Huntress seems to believe me.”

“Ah, Huntress.” There’s such a wealth of amusement an innuendo in the words that it gives her a shot of annoyance, enough to make her impatient enough to jump on him and then go all stone-hard, heavy enough to tip him on the ground and, when he isn’t using his superstrength, enough to keep him there. “One to you,” he says when she eases up, goes back to normal.

“So you’re not worried about the potential threat to the city, you’d rather poke and prod and see if I’m in a relationship.” Elena goes on the attack right off for the third round, shifting as fast as she can so he can’t get a good handle on her (and using another recently-acquired trick to make herself rather a patchwork of qualities, which is hard to keep up but really good for throwing him off). “Is that it?”

Rogue is unabashed. “We all gossip like old ladies around here, and you can’t deny that you and Huntress have been very close indeed for a while now. More than you ever were, I mean. Want to give me the scoop on the gossip?”

“There’s no scoop, and I’m not being coy.” She darts out of his way, getting the clip of his heavy boot on her hip for her thanks. “Got a girlfriend in my normal life, actually.”

“Brava.” He feints left and dives at her, but she ripples to camouflage for a second, long enough to startle him and get out of the way. “I still think you could go all ghost-like if you figured out the trick,” he remarks, panting a little. “Something to work on.”

“Not sure I have the power for it.” She’s getting stronger, patrolling so much and running through her tricks in her head as much as she can, but there are some things she’s not up for yet. “And Huntress knows I have a girlfriend,” she adds for good measure.

Rogue grins, a flash of white teeth underneath his visor. “Poor girl must be pining for you.”

“Come off it.”

“No, honestly, I’ve thought you two were fucking for months, this is throwing me off.”

Yet another thing to feel guilty about where Mithian is concerned, which wouldn’t be so bad—she knows the necessity of lying to people in her normal life—if she didn’t like Mithian so _much_. It’s rather to the point that a university friend once called “pre-love.” “Never have. She’s one of my best friends.”

“Pity, it would be quite the thing to watch.” Sometimes she thinks one of his superpowers is being able to give off the impression of leering when she can’t see most of his face.

Elena does one of the showy moves she picked up from the Lady Smuggler and kicks him in the helmet, giving it a good resounding _ding_. He staggers a few steps and she takes the opportunity to take his legs out from under him and pin him down again. “Two for me. What would Bastet say to that?”

“To you beating me twice? Probably only good things, she’s a great believer in feminism, that one.”

Elena rolls her eyes. “To you wanting to watch Huntress and me have sex.”

His tone is all innocence when he answers. “And why would she have anything to say about that?”

“If I’m not allowed to play stupid, neither are you. How long has it been now, six months?”

“Closer to seven.” He shrugs and lets her help him up. “Two rounds for me to take this back. Want to take it up a notch?”

“Congratulations, and let’s. Only don’t break any trees if you can help it.”

He snorts. “When do I ever?”

In answer, Elena gets a running start and swings off a branch and up into the foliage. He follows a second later with a laugh that interrupts his terrible attempt at a battle cry. They spend a few minutes chasing each other through the trees until he catches up with her and proceeds, with great glee, to toss her twenty feet into the trunk of the biggest tree around. She takes the distance to catch her breath and go bird-boned so she weighs less on impact. He follows and she goes swinging from branch to branch, feeling rather like Tarzan without the benefit of vines, until she gets up enough momentum to swing about like a trapeze artist and then kick him in the chest with both feet.

“You kick like a mule,” he wheezes, and then goes back to chasing her about happily.

The round takes another five minutes, both of them winded and quieter, before Elena declares her triumph and drops him ten feet from a tree to jump down on top of him, light enough not to break anything on either of them, and sit on his chest to keep him down. “Three for me, I think that makes best of five. You owe me an ice cream.”

Rogue laughs. “I concede my defeat. It’s good to fight with you again. Bastet and I don’t spar much considering one of her best tricks is turning into a terrifying flesh-rending beast, and First Knight and the Prince have us Knights working on cooperative drills so much that we don’t get any sparring practice in.”

“We should do it more often.” Not that she ought to commit any more of her time until whatever’s going on in her city is solved. “Maybe not at the moment, but when we’ve resolved the possible Sidhe problem one way or the other.”

He gives her a companionable nudge and lets her set a course towards the all-night ice cream parlor, where they went on a few “dates” while they were still together. “I’m not writing it off,” he says quietly as they get out of the park and get a few sideways looks from people who must be wondering what two supers were doing in the park at night that got them all mussed and dirty. “Especially now I know how seriously you’re taking it. I trust your judgment.”

“Thanks, Rogue. Means a lot.”

Rogue swings an arm around her shoulders. “Secret identities are such an annoyance. Sometimes I just want to get a beer with you, I miss having the chance to be friends in between all these life-saving maneuvers.”

Neither of them bothers saying why it’s almost certainly unwise, how as long as there are villains every super who knows the identity of another just adds into a dangerous and precarious web that could take too many of them down. “Maybe someday,” she says. “In the meantime, ice cream is all we can do while we’re on duty.”

“Ice cream it is, then. I accept the consequences of my defeat, and will man up and pay for it.”

The man who owns the shop has standing orders that supers get their orders for free (with the understanding that they will tip generously), but it’s the principle of the thing. Elena grins and ducks out from under his arm, jumping up toward the nearest rooftop to get there faster. Rogue gives her a boost, tossing her up easily, and follows after her.

*

The next day, Elena is moving gingerly, bruised up and worn out but feeling more peaceful after her sparring, and she’d like nothing more than a day to stay in her bathrobe and do nothing, but it’s a Saturday and she has it off, so she’s spending the day with Mithian.

They meet in front of the coffeeshop at ten and go in for their morning fixes, where Elena gets a roll of the eyes from Annis and a starry-eyed grin from Sefa, who seems to have decided that Elena’s affair with Mithian is the most romantic story of the year. It’s normal enough, holding hands in the queue and a little arguing over who pays the bill (before they settle on Elena’s employee discount and Mithian’s wallet), until they walk out and Elena nearly runs down Sophia from the bookshop on the pavement. “Oh,” she says, blinking a few times and righting herself, miraculously without spilling any of her drink. “It’s Sophia from the bookshop!”

“And you’re Elena!” She’s got dimples when she smiles, and Elena smiles awkwardly back, not quite sure where the conversation can go from here when Mithian is here and their drinks are getting cold. “This must be the girlfriend, hi, Elena mentioned you.”

Mithian smiles, relaxing a bit where she’s got her hand on Elena’s back, and looks at her expectantly. “Friend of yours?”

Sophia laughs like the conversation is entirely normal. “Acquaintance, really, we barely met the once, I’m just new to the city and far too friendly sometimes.”

“Well, welcome then. I’m Mithian,” says Mithian, and keeps looking at Elena, like she has any clue what she is meant to be doing. Awkward social encounters have never been her forte.

Sophia rescues her. “Thank you very much, I’m so pleased to meet you. And I’ll let you two get back to it, I’m sure you’re busy. And perhaps I’ll see the two of you around somewhere.” She looks off to the side, Elena thinks at the patch of Sidhe flowers across the street, and smiles. “Bye, Elena. Mithian.”

They do a bit of an awkward dance getting by each other on the street and Elena looks over her shoulder after a few steps to find Sophia already with a handful of the flowers, smelling them with a smile on her face. “That was odd,” she decides when they’re far enough away. “I’ve only met her once—well, twice, now. And the first time was terrible, she sort of asked me out and I said no and she gave me her number anyway so we could be friends. And then I didn’t call her.”

Mithian laughs. “Is it terrible to say that I’m glad?”

Elena squeezes her hand and takes a sip of her coffee. It’s still hot enough to scald her tongue, and she cheats a little bit to decrease the sensitivity after. “Jealous?” she asks once she’s managed to swallow.

“Maybe a bit. Mostly we don’t get to spend as much time relaxing together as I would like, and I would miss you if you went off to forge new friendships.”

Much as Elena actually enjoys making friends with new people once she’s got the chance (Mithian herself being example of it), she can’t help feel a little warmed that Mithian is jealous of her time, if not her person. “Well, you’ve got me all day today. And I’m working the closing shift at the shop tomorrow …” And more to the point, she isn’t patrolling tonight.

“Now _that_ is a temptation.” They catch each other on a sidelong look and Mithian lets out a brief laugh. “I had a whole lovely day planned out for us, catching a film at the independent place and doing dinner somewhere fancy and maybe going for a walk again, but all I want to do is drag you back to my flat.”

Elena swallows. “I can’t say I object.”

Mithian makes a pained face that takes Elena a second to decode as turned on. “You’re going to kill me,” she says, though she doesn’t sound very upset about it. “Really, if I didn’t have responsibilities I don’t think I’d ever let you out of bed.”

Elena winks at her. “Well, once you’re partner in some firm somewhere you can make me your kept woman, it isn’t as if I fancy being a barista forever.” Not that she has any other options in mind, other than childhood pipe dreams—she’s thought about going into the police force after her father, but then she’d have to give up being an on-the-street super and work inside the law when she knows all too well how that doesn’t always work.

For a second, Mithian looks as though she wants to ask the precise question Elena can’t figure out herself, but something on Elena’s face must prevent her. “It’s enough to make a person want to give up doing good and go into corporate law,” she says, and takes a drink of her own coffee. Elena follows suit, glad that it’s cooled down enough now.

“Something to consider, anyway,” she says once she’s taken a victorious and non-scalding gulp of her drink. “All you’d have to do is keep me in silk sheets and sex toys.”

Ever-poised Mithian chokes on her coffee; Elena restrains the temptation to be smug about that. “Right, my flat, soon as possible,” Mithian gets out after she’s finished coughing, and speeds up until their leisurely walk is more like a jog.

Elena doesn’t object, as she was rather aiming for that, and just tries to drink her coffee in between jostling past people on the pavement and mostly succeeds at not slopping it all over herself. She’s a little too sore for the running to be comfortable—damn Rogue and his tossing her into trees, she hopes he’s as sore as she is and that Bastet laughed at him—but after a street or so of not-quite-jogging her muscles stretch out and it’s much better, so by the time they get to Mithian’s flat she feels a bit less like dying.

By some miracle, they make it up to Mithian’s door without running into anyone (Elena has discovered that half the building seems to be filled with elderly ladies and gentlemen who all adore Mithian past all reason, which is half adorable and half incredibly inconvenient), just in time for both of them to take a last few gulps of their drinks, giggling in between them as they stand in the entryway to Mithian’s flat. “There,” Elena says when she finishes, a few seconds before Mithian and a little too triumphant about it.

Mithian may finish second, but she’s the first to get an article of clothing off, discarding her cup and stepping out of her shoes and socks the same time as she pulls her shirt off over her head. Elena hops across the living room on her way to the bedroom, trying to get her shoes off and failing to do it with any grace whatsoever. Mithian, by her laugh, seems to find it more endearing than ridiculous, so Elena keeps gamely at it instead of stopping like a sensible person.

They get to the bedroom with a trail of Mithian’s clothes behind them, and by the time they get to the bed she’s naked but for a necklace. She turns around when Elena gets through the door and goes for the hem of her shirt. “Your turn,” she says with a smile, and Elena lets her tug the shirt off over her head, only getting tangled up a little in the process. When she reaches for the button on her jeans, though, Mithian stops her with a hand on her arm, suddenly upset. “Elena, what did you _do_?” she asks, soft and distressed.

Elena, of course, is all over bruises thanks to Rogue, black and blue the way she only ever gets fighting other supers. To someone who doesn’t know what she is, she must look terrible, and she never thought to use her powers to hide them. “Hey, it’s fine.” She ducks her head to catch Mithian’s eye. “Went to the gym yesterday and did some wrestling with the trainer—I told you I did that, right? And I bruise like a peach, I promise it isn’t as bad as it looks.”

For a second, she thinks Mithian is going to call her on the lie, but instead she just sighs and continues to look terribly sad and traces over the bruises. “I’ll get you an ice pack,” she says after a second, any hint of naughtiness out of her voice.

“No, no, really, I promise, I did all necessary first aid last night.” Which she really did. She learned years ago that even supers need first aid and that not doing it and just hiding injuries does not in fact make them feel any better. Considering how clumsy she is and how few directly combat-related powers she’s got, Elena could practically get a nursing degree from all the first aid she knows how to do. “Honestly, I forgot it would look this bad or I would have warned you.” Or hidden it.

Mithian doesn’t look reassured, but she does finish stripping Elena, albeit more gently than she usually is when they’re in the bedroom. “Come to bed, then,” she says when that’s done, though the wrinkle hasn’t gone from between her brows—only gotten worse, really, since she’s bruised on her legs some too, and her arse because Rogue is a terrible human being. “I’ll just have to be very, very gentle,” she adds, smile finally resurfacing if not as bright as usual.

Elena hops into bed and doesn’t wince when she inevitably lands on a bruise, and tugs Mithian down next to her when she seems inclined to dither. “Gentle works, but I would like it if you did _something_.” That gets Mithian at least rolling her eyes, so Elena takes the opportunity to kiss her, tasting of warmth and morning coffee.

She isn’t used to going slowly or gently in bed—Mithian seems to quite enjoy manhandling her and doing marathon sessions, and before that Rogue certainly wasn’t one for flowery words or feather-light touches. This time, though, Mithian goes achingly slow, brushing her fingers over and then kissing every bruise she can find, so light it almost tickles. Elena flops back on the bed and enjoys the attention more than she was expecting, even if Mithian’s focus is born out of worry. She’s mumbling into Elena’s skin, a little fierce about it, but Elena doesn’t bother listening to more than the snatches that float up the bed to her (“hate to see you hurt,” “oh, sweetheart,” and any number of other things so sweet that it makes Elena wince a little knowing that chances are if they stay together she’ll come home hurt worse, and not just from training).

Mithian’s habit of being thorough is only exacerbated by the situation, so by the time she’s done kissing Elena all over and then sliding two fingers inside her to get her off, she feels wrung out and pleasantly tired, ready to go back to sleep even if it seems like a waste of a Saturday. She has something resembling chivalry, though, so even over Mithian’s light protest she returns the favor, sliding down the bed to get Mithian off with her mouth, enjoying the taste and the way Mithian helplessly winds her hands in Elena’s hair.

To Elena’s surprise, Mithian falls asleep first, clutching her close but not too tight, as if Elena’s a beloved teddy bear or going to escape if she doesn’t hold on. Elena tangles them a little closer together and kisses the top of Mithian’s head before setting herself to having a good nap.

A stray thought of Sophia pops into her head right as she’s on the edge of sleep, and Elena wonders if she’s still got her number somewhere before she starts wondering if she ever told Sophia her name the first time they met, and if not, why she knew it today.

*

The bruises from her fight with Rogue fade fast, because any super is a little quicker to heal than the average person, but in their place Elena finds that her bones simply ache, deep in them in a way her regular painkillers don’t touch. It’s not debilitating so much as distracting, but she must seem worn, because her dad looks worried and Mithian fusses and even when she’s on patrol she rarely finds herself alone, though nobody mentions why that might be.

In the midst of it, a new supervillain comes to town.

Or, well. Maybe not a villain, but definitely a super, and not one who identifies herself as a friendly. She doesn’t engage, isn’t ever there when Elena or any of the others get close, but she makes her presence known. She’s blue—uncomfortably like Elena, if more bright, and nobody ever mentions it but everybody _looks_ —and has long hair always whipping around her. She wears a long orange cloak that covers up whatever else she might be wearing, and she carries a staff, one that glows blue at its end sometimes. Nobody knows what it does, what _she_ can do, but she makes everyone uneasy, enough to make them more likely to take Elena’s worries seriously.

Maybe that’s a good thing, but Elena feels _watched_ with her around, and that rather takes precedence. The flowers, instead of spilling unordered all over the city, seem to start collecting on certain paths and streets. They’re all over the banks of the river, but they stretch out to other places in the city as well—most worryingly, there seem to be trails of them on Elena’s usual routes to home and work, and even a small scattering leading to Mithian’s flat. If they didn’t follow other paths as well, she might be more worried—as it is, she’s starting to think that giving up her identity to the public in exchange for protection for her dad and Mithian might be worth it.

Elena has never been one of the supers prone to doing stupid things (at least no more stupid than going out on the street in the first place). She doesn’t wander off alone, she doesn’t take on villains she thinks might be too much for her without backup, and she definitely doesn’t try to make deals with people she doesn’t trust for information.

Somehow, despite all that, she finds herself costumed and out in the city on a night when she’s not meant to be on duty. She had to cancel a date with Mithian to do it, but neither Rogue nor Huntress is meant to be on patrol, so neither of them will get it in their heads to follow her about if they catch sight of her, and she can put aside her love life to figure out what’s going on. She goes through the city as camouflaged as she can, and takes a spot on the bank of the river to wait.

She doesn’t have to wait for long. After half an hour, there’s a flash of blue and then the strange super is walking easily among all the flowers. Her hair is done up all in intricate braids and, up close, there’s stitching, some sort of embroidery, on her cloak, and she doesn’t bother pretending that she doesn’t know Elena is there, just turns unerringly towards her hiding spot and beckons.

Elena goes, hands up to prove she isn’t planning to make trouble. “I just want to ask you a few questions,” she says.

The super’s voice has some sort of odd resonance she must be using to disguise it. “I’m sure you do. I might well save you the trouble. Yes, I’m Sidhe. You might, in your silly manner of picking nicknames for yourselves, call me the Fairy Princess. I did not come through the portal—it is not open.” If Elena didn’t know what her own expressions looked like, when she’s in disguise, she wouldn’t be able to interpret the Fairy Princess’s expression as a smile. “Yet.”

“All the Sidhe were sent away,” she tries, even though that’s patently not true.

“You don’t care about that.” The Fairy Princess gives an airy wave of her hand. “No, you want to know what all this has to do with you and the magic in your veins. If we can control you, if you would still have powers even if the magic was taken away, if there is a way you can control it. Do you fancy yourself a heroine of the city, Changeling?”

Elena doesn’t bother being shaken that this person, whoever she is, knows the name she goes by, or the questions she can’t help asking herself—they’re the ones any logical person would be asking, in this situation. None of the literature has ever said that Sidhe can read minds, though a few sources say they can control them, given the right situation. “Not really in the top tier,” she says as easily as she can.

“You could be.”

Elena isn’t interested in being tempted, or getting herself talked into some sort of trap or deal. That isn’t the point of this. “I’m just here to find out if you’re in the city to hurt anyone, or make trouble. The rest of it is none of your business.”

“If you don’t make trouble for me, I won’t make it for you,” the Fairy Princess says with an unconcerned shrug.

“That isn’t what I asked.” Elena shifts, plants her feet a little more solidly. She’s not stupid enough to attack when her opponent’s powers are unknown but presumably include a glowing staff. “What do the Sidhe want here?”

“Stupid.” She seems more disappointed than mocking. “At least ask questions you don’t know the answers to. Ask me why I’m here, not if I’m here to hurt someone.”

Much as she wants to be contrary, Elena thinks it can’t hurt to play along for a bit. “Fine, then. Why are you here?”

“To open the portal. Remember, I said it’s closed.”

“How did you get here, then?”

She bends to pick a flower—mostly for show, Elena thinks. All the research she’s been able to do, and everything Dr. Gaius has posted, point to them being harmless on any world, only the sign of Sidhe being present. “I never left. My father was exiled, and me with him.”

Even on different worlds, people have the same stupid motivations for the things they do—Elena would bet any money that this Fairy Princess is hoping to get back into the good graces of the rest of the Sidhe by opening the portal. “I’m very sorry to hear that,” she says as politely as she can, because there’s no rule saying she has to share everything she figures out. Not with her, at least.

“You could be of great help to me.” The words are thrown out there carelessly, like she thinks Elena might actually take her up on them. “It isn’t as though my people wish to hurt yours. And really, I’ve grown quite fond of all of you in the years I’ve been here.”

Elena has read the history books, and she’s given herself quite the refresher course since Grunhilda told her she has Sidhe magic inside her, so she knows that even if the Sidhe don’t want to hurt them they aren’t over-fond of them either, and are more than willing to get them out of the way if they want something. “There’s no place like home, though,” she says. “Do you ever miss it?”

“Oh no, I think you’ve had enough hints out of me tonight.” She laughs, taps the staff against the ground a few times, and Elena rears back as the glow gets brighter. “Pay attention, Elena. I don’t need you, but I want you, and you have more bargaining chips if you come willingly.”

With that, she disappears, leaving Elena gaping, heart in her throat, the sound of her own name ringing in her ears. This Sidhe has been watching her, tracking her, enough to have connected her identities, and Elena is willing to believe that her father and Mithian and everyone at the coffeeshop are in trouble as a result. She needs to get the information out, find a way to protect the people who don’t know she’s Changeling as well as Elena, and go to ground as thoroughly as she can.

First order of business is to get off the streets and to a safe harbor, so Elena criss-crosses her way across the city and to one of the storage spaces that the city’s supers have set up as crisis centers, access to the first aid and communications and weapons, home bases if they need them. To her surprise, Bastet is in the one she chooses, sleeve rolled up as she puts stitches in her own arm—without anesthetic, most likely. “Rogue will worry,” says Elena to alert her to her presence.

Bastet freezes before continuing with her work, obviously having worked out who’s there. “Rogue came home last month with his shoulder dislocated, he can’t talk. I didn’t think you were on the streets tonight.”

“I didn’t know you two live together.” That means they definitely have each other’s other identities, and Elena envies them that, the trust they have in each other. “He just said you were together.” She takes a deep breath. It’s best to get the information out early. “I’ve been compromised.”

That makes Bastet look up from her first aid. “How? Who?”

“The new super, the one who spends time by the river. I don’t know how, but she said my name, right out. She’s a Sidhe, she’s an exile trying to open the portal to her homeworld so she can _stop_ being one, so I’m betting she found me because of the magic I’ve got in me. I’m taking myself off the streets until she’s neutralized.” Elena closes her eyes and hates what she has to say next, but it’s the same as anyone would do if there was a supervillain who had their identity and the ability to use it, which the Fairy Princess certainly does. “Maybe for good.”

Bastet sighs, or maybe it’s just a pained breath, since she’s tying her thread off. “Sometimes I think secrecy does more harm than good. What would happen, really, if we all knew who each other were? I mean, I get why the police and the public can’t know, but I trust you just like I trust Rogue, or like I’d trust Warlock or Huntress or Butterfly or any of the others.”

“Something like this would happen. If I knew who you were, and this Fairy Princess knows who I am, she’d be able to find out the whole network of us.”

“That’s only a threat if we let it be a threat. Sure, it would be dangerous for us, but our lives are dangerous anyway. I know Dr. Gaius trained all of us up to be scared of it happening, but he’s from the old guard, and it isn’t as though everything they did was perfect. They started the biggest rift in the first place.”

“That doesn’t change the fact that this situation is a problem. I need to figure out how to protect my family.”

“Is she interested in them? Or just you?”

“I don’t know yet, but I’m not willing to take the risk.”

Bastet nods and rolls her sleeve down, throwing away the needle she was using before she stands up. “Let us know if we can help, and put a full report out there. If she’s planning on opening the portal, then I think the Big Four need to know, and to come back if they can. Sorceress and the Prince are almost wrapped up in London, but Lady Smith and the Warlock both need to be told ASAP.”

“I’m on it. Be careful out there, and avoid the Fairy Princess if you can tonight, I don’t like the look of that staff of hers.”

“I’m always careful,” says Bastet, in blatant disregard of the cut she just stitched up, and nimbly hops out the window.

Elena stays where she is for twenty minutes, trying to figure out the best plan of action, before climbing down through the building and taking the sewers home, hoping that at least the Fairy Princess won’t follow her belowground.

*

A week goes by, and the Fairy Princess doesn’t make a move.

Elena keeps her life as normal as she can, other than the sudden absence of patrols (which she makes up for with endless hours in the gym training, followed by more hours training her powers at home). She goes to work, goes home, goes out with Mithian (though Mithian’s going through a busy patch with work and events for her father, so Elena doesn’t see her as much as either of them wants), and only barely restrains herself from begging her dad to put a police detail on himself and Mithian and outside the coffee shop.

Most likely, she knows, the Fairy Princess is giving her time to consider working with her; she peppers Dr. Gaius and Merlin Emrys with e-mails, but Dr. Gaius just tells her he’ll have to look into it and all she gets from Merlin is an out-of-office message. That leaves her on her own to puzzle out why she’s being asked to help.

First, and most obvious, Fairy Princess must need her to open up the portal. Most likely, her blood or her father’s won’t work because they’re exiles, and Grunhilda’s wouldn’t have either, most likely because her body wasn’t made to hold Sidhe magic as Elena’s apparently is. It also leads her to wonder if Grunhilda was with the Sidhe and her father in the years she was missing from Albion.

That, at least, she can do something about, so she flags her dad down when he gets home from work one evening right as she’s getting ready to go out with Mithian, who declared that they are both in need of a night out dancing when they spent their last date fidgeting and frustrated at the world rather than enjoying one another’s company.

“Can I talk to you?” she asks, sitting him down with his evening beer and flopping down on the couch to figure out how to fasten the shoes a friend lent her. “Business stuff?”

“What do you need, duck?”

“Was there ever any word from your lot about what Grunhilda was doing in the years she was gone?”

Her dad leans back in his chair and frowns. “Nothing much, nothing that raised any flags, anyway. I think she was living with a family in the country, boarding with them or something. You think it will help with what’s going on right now?”

“It’s worth looking at. She was still really devoted to the Sidhe, for them having been gone twenty years. If she was staying with some exiles, they might have convinced her to take one last try for me.”

That only makes him look more unhappy, but they got their arguments about her safety done with years ago. She knows that he—like any parent—would rather she were in and safe at night, but he won’t try to stop her investigating. “I’ll have a look at the files at work tomorrow. If there’s a trail you can follow that we can’t, I’ll let you know.”

“Thanks, dad.” She checks her phone and stands to give him a quick kiss on the forehead. “I’m meeting Mithian for a late snack before we go out, so I should go pretty soon. Don’t think I’ll be coming back tonight, so keep everything locked and keep your panic button nearby.”

“Of course, Ellie. Call me if you need to. I’d always rather know what’s going on than not.”

“Always.” She’s not quite at the point where she’s keeping things at Mithian’s flat (other than a toothbrush, because otherwise she would forget hers constantly), so Elena throws together a quick bag of clothes to wear to work in the morning and heads out the door, waving at her dad again before she goes.

Mithian’s waiting for her when she gets to the pizza place where they agreed to meet, only a few blocks down from the club where they first started getting themselves sorted, and she looks restless and out of sorts. Elena gives her a hug and a kiss hello and then keeps hold of her hand as they order a few slices of pizza and slide in at a table.

“You look wretched,” she says when they finally get settled, and then winces. Perhaps that wasn’t the best thing to lead with. “Stressful day?”

Luckily, Mithian doesn’t expect her to be diplomatic about things; she just huffs out a laugh that’s half a sigh. “Stressful month, maybe. The case I’m working on right now is difficult. It’ll be good to dance some of that out of my system.”

Elena isn’t sure, but she thinks that’s Mithian’s way of asking her not to ask about it anymore, so she steers clear of the subject. Instead, she rattles on about customers at the coffee shop and how she thinks Sefa is going to end up asking Gilli out before he can ask her because he is dithering uncharacteristically, and gradually both of them relax, Elena taking her mind off the Fairy Princess and her compromised identity and Mithian unbending, maybe a little relieved that Elena isn’t pressing her. Probably it’s not healthy for their relationship that they’re bottling things up, but it’s early days yet.

By the time they finish eating, it feels like a normal date, and Elena decides to use the opportunity to hold Mithian’s hand on the short walk to the club. It’s busy, considering it’s still early in the night, and the music is already pouring out of the doors. Either they’re looking especially pretty or the bouncer recognizes Mithian as the mayor’s daughter, because they’re let through the line easily.

It isn’t very crowded inside, at least not yet—still early for the partying crowd to come out, and Elena thinks the general unease in the city probably means that people are less likely to go out and flirt with pretty strangers anyway (though she freely admits that may be an erroneous assumption). That makes it easy to stake out a pair of seats at the bar and have a few intensely pink drinks each, giggling over the names like they’re still in uni and loosening up, the last of their stress getting pushed out of focus.

Mithian is the one who leads them out to the dance floor as it starts getting a little more crowded, though Elena doesn’t need much convincing. The music is pounding, playing a remix of something Elena vaguely recognizes having heard on the radio at the gym, and she’s warm and a little tipsy, and Mithian is pink-cheeked from her own drinks, and all in all, it seems the perfect recipe for a good night out. They dance through six songs straight, the floor growing ever more crowded, before Mithian gives her a thorough kiss and goes to get them some water.

When she feels hands on her hips ten minutes later, Elena assumes Mithian’s back, maybe after a futile attempt for the bartender’s attention (because everyone in the vicinity has to have seen Mithian’s parting kiss and none of them have approached her since then), but after a second she realizes the grip is wrong and turns to tell whoever it is that she’s taken before she realizes she recognizes the girl behind her. “Oh, wow, hi, Sophia,” she says with an attempt at a smile, and turns around, dislodging Sophia’s hands at the same time.

Sophia just beams at her. “We seem to be running into each other all over the place.”

“I guess so.” If their meeting was chance, and running into her on the street with Mithian was coincidence, Elena isn’t quite sure what this is. Sophia seems completely harmless, but Elena isn’t feeling terribly trusting of people at the moment. “Well, it’s good to see you,” she says over the music with a bright smile, and hopes that can count as the end of the conversation.

Instead, Sophia keeps dancing next to her, though at least she hasn’t got her hands on Elena any longer. “I saw you with your girlfriend, and I had to say hello.”

The music changes over, getting a bit louder, and Elena takes that excuse to stop the conversation, just nods and smiles and hopes Mithian gets back soon.

Mithian gets there before the song is over, a paper cup of water in each of her hands. Elena takes hers and drinks it all in one go before crumpling her cup up and popping it in her pocket. “Having fun?” Mithian asks quietly into her ear, and is so careful about not looking at Sophia that it’s obvious she’s bothered.

“More now that you’re back,” Elena assures her, and hooks an arm around her neck to keep her close.

That seems to satisfy Mithian, other than a few more veiled suspicious looks in Sophia’s direction, and they go back to their dancing, though it’s awkward when Sophia stays so close. It’s one thing to dance with a girlfriend on the club floor and know there are anonymous strangers watching—and, in all probability, getting turned on by it. It’s another entirely to have someone who’s barely an acquaintance and is definitely a pushy one watching, dancing a little too close for comfort and a little too far away to ask her to give them some space.

Mithian doesn’t seem too pleased about the situation, but she makes up for it by concentrating all her attention on Elena, dancing close and hot the way she did the first time. She doesn’t kiss her—and damn Sophia, really, Elena is going to feel quite free to blame that on her—but she does keep her close enough to whisper about the people around them or the music every once in a while.

After a while, Sophia drifts off, snagged by a man in a lot of leather who seems to think she’s easy prey (Elena thinks about getting involved, but she’s got the feeling Sophia can take care of herself). Elena and Mithian both relax after that, and as the crowd gets progressively bigger and drunker, they’re happy to stay close to each other, taking the occasional break but mostly dancing until Elena’s more sore than she is after most of her sessions at the gym.

Elena starts swallowing yawns sometime around midnight, and lets her first one loose half an hour later. Mithian grins the second she notices. “Thank God,” she says over the music. “I thought you were going to outpace me, and it would have been very embarrassing. Do you want to go back to mine?”

Elena considers. “Finish the song?” she offers. “I like this one.”

Like that’s some sort of challenge, Mithian dances even closer, whole body pressed up against Elena’s, till it’s more like foreplay than proper dancing. Not that Elena minds. It isn’t as though they’re the most inappropriate dancers on the floor at the moment, and in the crush of people, it hardly matters. Sophia isn’t around anymore either, to make it awkward, so Elena wraps her arms around Mithian and mouths at her neck as they sway the song through.

After, they fight through the crowd without too much trouble, mostly ignoring the winks and salacious grins from anyone who saw them dancing together. They make it to the bar before they get flagged down, Sophia waving and beckoning from where her leather-clad friend is staring at her with single-minded besottedness that is both impressive and rather creepy, plying her with drinks she seems to be ignoring. Elena gives Mithian an apologetic look and detours by the bar to say a goodbye, since it’s only polite.

“On your way out?” Sophia asks when they get in shouting distance.

“Yes, just off for the night.” Elena tries not to make it obvious that she and Mithian are off to shag one another into the mattress, but she suspects that’s a useless enterprise given how they were dancing and the way Mithian’s grip on her hand gets a tad more possessive. “It was good to see you.”

Sophia smirks, looking between them, and Elena resists the urge to check and see if she left a love bite on Mithian during that last dance. “You too. Both of you. Have a good night, ladies, and I’m sure I’ll see you soon.”

Luckily, it’s too loud for Mithian’s mutter of “Not if I can help it” to travel to Sophia, so Elena swallows her nervous laugh and pulls her away to the coat check, so they can get back to Mithian’s flat and finish what they started on the dance floor.

In the morning, Elena gets a text from her dad, and takes it into the bathroom to read when Mithian complains at its arrival. _Grunhilda was staying with a father and daughter in the north,_ it reads. _Aulfric Lake passed away two weeks before Grunhilda came to the city. The daughter doesn’t send up any red flags, though she has recently moved to Albion as well._

Elena swallows and texts him back. That’s the Fairy Princess, then she’d be willing to bet on it. _What’s her name, then?_

The answer takes less than a minute. _Sophia Lake. Want me to send a picture?_

Elena has to sit down and rest her head against the wall, because fuck, of _course_ , and how could she possibly be this stupid? Sophia knew her name without being told (just like the Fairy Princess), she turns up wherever Elena seems to be, there’s something off about her …

_No need,_ she texts back, and tries not to throw up.

*

Elena doesn’t go out in the city that night. Mithian’s busy, so she goes home to her dad, tells him briefly she’s had contact with Sophia Lake and not to set the police on her because they’ll only get in trouble, and tries to put together something resembling a strategy. She has no way of knowing what kinds of powers Sophia has, how strong they are when she’s been exiled, what her father’s death has to do with spurring both her and Grunhilda into action, and what she can do to stop Sophia opening the portal—though for that she thinks leaving the city, even the country, might be her best short-term bet. If Sophia could open the portal on her own, she already would have.

She’ll also need to bring in help—all of the Big Four are still out of the city, and isn’t that inconvenient, but her friends will help as best they can and she’ll need them to. Things aren’t precisely more urgent, now that she knows who the Fairy Princess is, but in some ways they are, if only because Sophia has made a point of acknowledging Mithian, and that means she’s got a preferred hostage. Elena goes places with her dad, Sophia undoubtedly could have found and made her point then, but she’s only chosen times with Mithian, after that first one. So Mithian’s got a big target on her back, now, and Elena has to figure out how to protect her before she goes in for a big confrontation.

So she doesn’t go out into the city. She gives herself a night to sit on the news and strategize, and she goes to bed early because she suspects she’ll need all the rest she can get until the situation is resolved.

That doesn’t mean she’s surprised when her pager goes with a long, shrill tone at three in the morning.

Elena is awake and halfway in costume before she gropes for the display to see what the situation is. It’s not a general emergency call, so that doesn’t leave many options—any at all, really. She’s angry when she sees the distress beacon sent her way is from Huntress’s button, but she isn’t shocked. She’d be willing to bet Sophia pressed the code in herself, actually, and she’s even more willing to bet that there’s an implied threat behind the message that if Elena gets anyone else involved Huntress will die.

She sends out a message anyway, an emergency call to everyone in the city: _make a perimeter around the bridge, Huntress in danger. Don’t engage_.

Her normal preparations are probably useless, but Elena goes through them anyway: costume, weapons, double-checking and triple-checking everything. She knows enough to know Sophia won’t start anything without her. She’s counting on Elena being tired, unprepared, alone, scared, and willing to do anything to get Huntress back.

The last one is true, but she’ll do everything she can to make sure the first four aren’t.

It’s a long, anxious jog across the city on an otherwise quiet night. Most nights, patrols are winding down, if not done, by three, and even with everyone on edge lately, people go home early. Whatever supers there are out in the city are probably already on their way to the bridge or in position, so she doesn’t even have the comfort of running into them.

With a street between her and an unobstructed view of the bridge, someone grabs Elena by the arm. She turns ready to fight, but when she gets a good look it’s the Smugglers, standing shoulder-to-shoulder, both looking grim. “What’s the situation?” she asks, trying not to sound as impatient as she feels.

“Under the bridge,” says the Lady Smuggler. “That staff of hers is glowing something fierce, and something odd is going on with the sky above it. We were going in if you took five more minutes, it doesn’t look good and there’s been no sign of struggle from Huntress. Do you have intel?”

“Nothing much, just the beacon I got. I do have the Sidhe’s human identity, so if she gets away tonight we’ve got the means to hunt her down, but I’d prefer we didn’t have to. She’s got my identity and thus the identities of some targets I’d rather not have her going after. At least Huntress can defend herself.” Although the knowledge that there’s no struggle makes her more worried than she’d been before. Huntress had to be incapacitated, for Sophia to send for Elena, but no struggle at all could mean something worse. “I’ll hit my beacon, just general emergency tone, if I need backup, though you can use your discretion as well.”

The Lord Smuggler gives her a nod. “Be safe, and be cautious.”

Elena snorts, though it’s a weak attempt at amusement. “Like you two ever are?”

Lady Smuggler ignores her. “Bring her back in one piece.”

There’s no joke to make about that. Elena just nods and does one last check of all her equipment before taking off at a jog again, out into the open and to where she’s definitely in sight of Sophia.

Sophia doesn’t acknowledge her, but she doesn’t have to. There’s a blue glow in the space under the bridge, and an answering one in the sky directly above—Elena is willing to bet it’s got something to do with a portal, but she doesn’t let that hurry her along. If she’s sloppy, she’ll make mistakes, and she refuses to let Huntress pay for them.

The silence seems deafening while she makes her way over. Sophia doesn’t say a word, none of the other supers in the perimeter seem inclined to do something rash (she can only hope the Smugglers have passed her request on and that they’ll stay out of things until she calls them), and there’s no noise from Huntress. Probably unconscious, though Elena doesn’t like to think of that—the last time Huntress was in this much danger was when she got on the wrong side of the Sorceress, and then she had Warlock and the Prince and the Lady Smith to back her up. This time, she’s just got Elena, who’s a poor substitute.

That doesn’t mean she’ll give up, though.

“It took you longer than I was expecting,” Sophia says when she gets close enough. She still has the resonance in her voice that makes her sound inhuman, which makes Elena suspect she doesn’t know she’s been found out. She’ll have to decide how to use that.

Elena tries her best to seem unconcerned. “Well, I was asleep. Trying to force my hand?”

Sophia’s giggle is eerie coming back as doubled and distorted as it does. “I got impatient, you can’t blame me for that. Aren’t you going to assure the safety of your hostage?”

“She’s with you, of course she’s not safe.” And part of Elena doesn’t want to know if Huntress is already dead; she’ll fight hard either way, maybe all the harder if she’s died, but for at least a little longer she wants the illusion that everything will turn out okay.

“She’s unconscious, not dead.” Sophia steps out from under the bridge. The light in the sky, Elena notes, seems to follow the light on her staff. “I might need her if you say no, after all, and I’ll need her alive. Pity that all the blood I would need from her would kill her when it would just be a little inconvenience to you.”

Elena takes a second to absorb that information before she decides what question to ask; patience, her dad drilled into her when she first started training for the streets, is the most important thing she can have. Everyone always acts fast in the films and the comics, but in reality, she needs to take the time to figure out the consequences of whatever she decides to do. “So she has Sidhe magic in her as well, then?” she asks as casually as she can, making a point of not shifting around.

“Only what’s transferred in from close contact with you. Amazing what powerful magic that sort of thing can be.”

Once again, she thinks it through: she spends more time with Huntress than with any of the other supers, but some of them could have residual magic as well, in that case. Huntress is still the most personal hostage, though it’s baffling Sophia wouldn’t pick her dad or Mithian, someone without the protection Huntress has. Unless Huntress made herself a target, maybe, searched her out, her protective instincts for Elena kicking in. “Interesting choice of a hostage, either way.”

“Only the most obvious one.” Sophia shrugs, and then tilts her head when Elena’s momentary confusion must flash across her face. “Unless … unless, of course, you don’t know. And wouldn’t that be a turn-up? I hadn’t factored that in, but I suppose I’ll just have to show you.”

Sometimes, the best thing she can do is play into Sophia’s hands. “Don’t know what?”

“Oh no, you’ll have to see this. You’d never believe me if I just told you. I promise, no blood will be spilled until you realize just exactly who my hostage is.”

Elena brings electricity up under her skin, a mostly-useless defense but one that makes her feel safer, and follows Sophia under the bridge, to a figure wrapped in chains. A figure in Huntress’s costume, a little ripped, chest barely moving with her breath, and the hood thrown carelessly back in a way that not even the villains of the city would do—there’s at least some sort of honor code, after all.

And of course, after all this, Elena shouldn’t be surprised when the uncovered face is Mithian’s.

Mithian, who searched her out in the club after Elena was injured by Grunhilda—after she mentioned, in both of her personas, to the same woman, that Grunhilda was her nanny when she was a child, and God, that was careless. Mithian, who can’t stand to see bruises on Elena’s skin, who buys coffee and flirts and kisses her like she’s the most precious thing in the world. And, apparently, Mithian who fights alongside her, back to back, who’s been more protective than usual lately, who’s everything to her in two worlds now but didn’t trust her enough to _tell her that_.

Sophia laughs, and Elena reminds herself she hasn’t got the luxury of anger at Mithian right now, because Mithian needs to be _alive_ to have the necessary argument with her. She undoubtedly has her reasons, and now all Elena wants is to hear them. “You didn’t know, then? My, what an honest love affair,” says Sophia, a world of mockery in her voice.

Elena reaches out and strokes Mithian’s cheek, hoping it looks as though she’s just overcome with emotion and letting the electricity out, just enough to shock her into consciousness. It can’t hurt to have backup. Elena is between Sophia and Mithian, so when her eyes fly open, she makes a frantic hushing motion and watches Mithian go through a dozen familiar and horrible expressions before her eyes flutter back shut. “No, I didn’t,” she says, and oh, how that rankles. Now that she’s thinking about it, there have been a thousand signs, if only she’d cared to look, but she’d blindly trusted that Huntress would have told her if they’d met in real life, if not that Mithian would have said who she was. “So by close contact I assume you mean sex?”

Mithian somehow manages to flinch without moving a muscle, and Elena turns around to see Sophia, who’s leaning on her staff looking as unconcerned as though Elena is just there for afternoon tea. “Of course I do. That’s magic in all worlds. At first I was hoping you’d be easy on both of us and fuck me, but Miss King here is an unfortunate necessity. If only I’d come earlier.”

If Sophia knows who both of them are, and Elena knows who Sophia is, then she can pass on the information, now that she knows Mithian is awake. “You aren’t really my type, Sophia, and besides, you weren’t desperate enough to come earlier. You forgot your father was mortal in human form, didn’t you? And now that he’s dead you’ll do anything to get back to the place where you’re near-immortal. That’s why you sent Grunhilda for me this time and didn’t care if she killed herself doing it.” That’s the best theory she’s been able to come up with since her father’s text, anyway.

Sophia’s face is ugly with anger, and she flickers into her human form for a second; the Sidhe form is as much a disguise for her as Elena’s modified version is for her, then. As an exile, she must be more human than Sidhe. She doesn’t let any answers slip, though, nor lose control like she’s been trying to make Elena do. “Well done on your investigative work—or should I be commending your father? I did think about bringing him along, but with your Huntress being so obliging as to paint a target on herself as two people, well, I couldn’t resist.”

Elena would love to see Mithian’s reaction to that, but she doesn’t dare turn around and let on that she’s conscious again. If she still is. She looked dazed, with her eyes open, and Elena isn’t sure all of that was from the electricity. “You’re banking that I’ll give up my city, even my world, to save my … to save Huntress.” She doesn’t know what Mithian—what either of them—is to her now, and she won’t take the time to figure it out. “We’re taught to put the well-being of others ahead of our own, even those of our friends and family.” Not that any of them ever listen to that lecture, not properly.

“Oh, but the better you cooperate with me, the more of them I’ll help you save. Your father, your other costumed friends … they wouldn’t be allowed to continue with what they’re doing, not with the Sidhe around, but they would at least be safe.”

Safe, locked up, unable to put together any sort of resistance. They would rather be in danger, given that. “You’re an exile, though,” she points out. “Your magic, your blood won’t work to open the portal, why would you have any power with them at all? I’d really have more luck bypassing you entirely and opening the portal to throw myself on their mercy.”

There’s a plan taking shape in between the rising panic and the attempts to keep Sophia talking, cobbled together out of what Dr. Gaius and Merlin Emrys have told her over these past few weeks, out of chance comments and hope. Her blood, and someone’s intent. If she gives her blood to Sophia, then it’ll be Sophia’s intent, and the portal will open, and Elena thinks this is her only chance: she may have enough Sidhe magic in her to open a portal, but she doubts there’s enough to close one again. If, however, she spills her own blood and concentrates hard enough, she might be able to pour the magic out of herself so no one can try to use her as a bargaining chip again, and use the magic to seal off even the chance of a portal being opened in her city.

It’s a shaky plan at best, and she has no idea of the consequences. If her superpowers are tied to the magic, as she’s been worrying, she could be left almost defenseless in the fight that will happen after, and she’ll have to rely on Huntress’s ability to get out of chains (which she has a talent for, but she looked to be in a bad way) to protect her, and the other supers to know to come. And if there’s something vital she’s missing about intent, and who controls it, everything may go completely backwards.

Unfortunately, it’s the best hope she’s got. It will end things, definitively, either with victory or disaster, and mean that she’s no longer a danger to her friends and family, or at least no more than any super is. Elena hits her hand against her hip a few times, hoping it looks like a nervous gesture, when she’s really hoping she’s keying in the sequence for _stand by_ to anyone in range.

“You’re a human,” Sophia points out. “Exile will trump that, any day. Come now, you know what the Sidhe do to those who resist. We never did it to you, but the stories of others are why you closed the portal in the first place. Open a portal willingly and you may save lives. Let me tell them I had to force it, and …”

The first step has got to be pretending herself convinced, though she’s the opposite. Sophia has no power, and that’s why she’s trying to win it for herself. At the moment, if a portal opens, the Sidhe may attack and decimate the population out of petty revenge for events twenty years ago, or they may have forgotten entirely about what must seem to them a planet not worth the trouble of taking. Either way, Sophia on her side won’t do a thing to help them. “Okay. Okay, I … you have to promise not to hurt her, to let her go. And I do this myself, I don’t trust you not to bleed me dry out of spite. You can take all the credit you like after, but let me have my pride.”

“Oh, good girl. You’re a soft heart, Elena, I knew you wouldn’t let them down.”

She can almost feel Mithian’s confusion and rising panic, but she still refuses to turn around. “What do I have to do?”

“We go out under the open sky, you let your blood fall in the river, and I’ll say the words to channel the power.” Sophia’s grin grows sharp and wide.

Sidhe magic can be done by ritual, Elena reminds herself, but the intent matters more, and the intent of the person bleeding has got to matter more than anyone else’s. She taps out another _stand by_ and hopes it will reassure everyone that she has a plan. “Under the sky, right. Can I …” She makes her voice waver. “Can I say goodbye to Mithian first? Just in case?”

Sophia snorts. “Oh, certainly, say your goodbyes to your unconscious lover, and much good it will do you.”

It may do her good, in fact. Elena turns back and crouches next to Mithian, who seems to be struggling to keep her breathing regular and light. She uses the dark to slide her set of lock picks out of a pocket and presses them into Mithian’s hand even as she gives her a brief kiss on the cheek. “Trust me. Don’t call for them until I’m done,” she whispers, and stands up. “Fine. I’m ready.”

Sophia leads them out from under the bridge and into the cold, filthy water. Elena tries not to flinch at it and stops when she’s out a little past her knees. That makes Sophia roll her eyes, like she wanted to go out into the middle of the river for the sake of drama and appearance, but Elena stays where she is and after a second she tilts the staff in her hands until the glow in the sky is over Elena’s head instead of her own and nods. “Spill your blood, and I will say what I must to activate your magic and the portal. And, needless to say, you should not double-cross me.” Her eyes flash red before going back to normal, but if Elena were the sort to be easily dissuaded by warnings she wouldn’t still be working on the streets.

Elena fumbles in her belt for a suitable knife. “How much blood does it take?”

“Of yours? Little. Certainly not enough to kill you.”

She doesn’t have a way of calling the Sidhe magic to the surface, but she pretends she’s doing it anyway, feeling like she’s foolish and talking to a child or an animal: _come out, come out, wherever you are_. Maybe it’s her powers or maybe it’s the magic, but it feels like her skin starts humming, something alerted and ready for whatever she’s about to be. _When my blood spills,_ she thinks, getting any thought of failure or danger to those she cares for out of her head, using the meditation exercises Dr. Gaius taught them all, _all the magic will spill with it, and it will protect my city from the Sidhe and ruin any chances of their ever opening another portal in this place._ “Okay,” she says out loud, one last time, and rolls up her sleeve past her elbow so she’ll be able to hide the cut later.

Sophia looks hungry with eagerness, and Elena thinks that maybe the desire, her father’s death and whatever has come after, is making her stupid, and that she won’t figure out what’s going on until too late. She seems all too willing to believe the worst of humans, Elena included, and maybe she thinks herself more threatening than she is, as though people in Albion tell nightmare stories about the Sidhe when they’re a footnote in their history at best, having been barred entry before they could hurt anyone or try to take over. “Do it,” she says. The light on her staff is trembling, with nerves or excitement.

Elena opens up a long, deep slice in her arm just under the elbow, doing her best to ignore the pain and keep her mind on the mantra. _The magic is spilling out of me, and it will protect Albion from the Sidhe,_ she reminds herself, and as the blood starts running into the water, she feels a gentle tug in her chest the way she did when Grunhilda used her spell. It doesn’t hurt her, this time, or make it harder to move, just slithers uncomfortably out of her, as though the magic is pulling out of her hands and feet, arms and legs, all the rest of her, and leaving just her own body behind, odd and naked-feeling. It’s spilling gallons to the drop, and she imagines it going ever faster, sinking into the river and _protecting_ everything.

Sophia, exultant face flipping between human and Sidhe so fast that she seems like a blur, starts chanting something in the Sidhe language, but before she gets out even a few syllables, the water around Elena starts lighting up blue and gold. It’s flashy and ridiculous and Elena wants to laugh, but she’s still concentrating, knowing it isn’t done yet and that she doesn’t have long before Sophia attacks and that it must be done by then. Sure enough, Sophia sees the glowing, how fast it lights up and how it spreads out like it’s making a barrier, going up into the sky and out around them, color fading as it goes. “You didn’t _dare_ ,” she screams, and Elena wants to cover her ears from the doubled and tripled sound of it.

_Albion is protected, and Mithian and my dad and the others are all safe and free of my magic,_ she thinks fiercely, and staggers as the last of the magic wells out of her with another drip of blood, falling into the river and safely away from Sophia and her plans. The light above Elena goes out, choked by Elena’s own magic, and then suddenly _everything_ is dark, only the lights of the city and Sophia’s staff still glowing, Elena’s magic nowhere at all, and certainly not within her. “Never trust humans not to do something stupid and brave,” she says, half smug and half ready to fall over, and hits her emergency button just as there’s a rattle of chains from under the bridge and just as Sophia screams and lashes out with her staff.

Elena goes flying out towards the middle of the river, out of breath and without the chance to do more than curl up so she won’t belly-flop before she goes under. The dirty water stings in the fresh cut on her arm, and Elena reaches out for the surface even as it ices over, no doubt by Sophia’s magic. She gasps for air, helpless with so little time to prepare, and instead of choking on the water, she _breathes_ it.

After a disbelieving second, Elena feels what she can only assume are gills on her neck, which is definitely a new trick and not one she’s ever been able to do before even though she tried on a whim once. She’s still weak and bleeding and dizzied from the loss of the magic she’s never been without, but she can breathe long enough to get to the surface and pound her way through it.

When she reaches the surface, the ice above her is already shattering, and she recognizes the gloved hand the reaches out for hers before she even grasps it and lets Mithian pull her up to the surface. Elena gasps for air, gills already melting away, and looks around to find that in the minute or so she was underwater pandemonium has broken out.

It seems like every super in the city, barring the Big Four, is taking Sophia on, in a circle around her that puts Elena and Mithian well out of it and protected. She’s lashing out at them with her staff, throwing them back, but with her ice on the water she can’t send any of them underwater like she did Elena. Bastet is fully shifted, growling and preparing to spring, with Rogue flanking her to one side and the Smugglers to the other, all armed up and ready. The whole Knight Brigade is there, all of them grim, costumes askew like they jumped out of bed to answer Elena’s call. Butterfly is at her smallest size, a dart of bright pink in the darkness with the easiest time of dodging Sophia’s blows, shrieking abuse in her tiny little voice.

“Changeling, _Changeling_ ,” Mithian says, like she’s been saying it a while, and Elena feels sick all over again realizing that she should have recognized that voice all the while, remembering Mithian calling her “sweetheart” in bed like she’s always trying to keep from saying the wrong name.

When Elena turns to her, Mithian has her hood back up, back into being the Huntress Elena knows so well and doesn’t know at all. “I’m fine, I’m good, we’ve got to go help.”

“Changeling, you’ve lost your disguise, fix that first.”

Elena looks down at her hands, pink and normal, and blinks. The blue form is the one thing she’s never had trouble keeping no matter how shaken she gets, but maybe that was the Sidhe magic working through her—it did make her look a little bit like them, anyway. Still, no matter how distasteful it is now, it’s the guise everyone knows her under, so she grasps for it. It’s harder than it ever was before, but after a few seconds Mithian nods, and Elena cements the disguise in place as best she can, letting it run as her baseline so she can do other things over it. “Now we help,” she says, and levers herself to her feet.

“Any advice?” Mithian sounds wretched, but she stands when Elena shakes her head and gets upright, tottering a little on the ice. Apparently the dance classes didn’t extend to ice skating ones in her training regimen (and of course it was training, God, Mithian must have been hinting since the very beginning, she must think Elena is so _stupid_ ), but Elena’s did, back when Grunhilda was still her nanny, so she grabs Mithian’s arm and keeps them both upright to join the circle.

Mithian is the one who braces them both when Sophia lashes out for them, her superstrength keeping them from sliding too far when she digs her boots into roughen the ice. First Knight moves aside for them with a solemn nod, and when Elena looks over at her closer friends, Rogue and Bastet and the others, they’re all watching her, as if waiting for orders. “If all she can do is blast us back, we can fight that,” she says, and pushes herself off Mithian to skate forward, towards Sophia, whose whole attention is on her now that she’s in combat.

Sophia jumps up and _dives_ for her, but her concentration on Elena means she isn’t paying attention to anyone else, and they all take that opportunity and run with it, closing the circle in around her—Butterfly grabs from above and goes to her full size, shocking her with the extra weight, and Bastet’s only a second behind, using the sheer strength of her teeth to rip the staff out of Sophia’s hand and snap it in half. Sophia screams and lashes out with whatever magic she has inside her, form only human without the staff helping her.

There are gasps of pain and shouts around Elena, and she grits her teeth when one of Sophia’s blasts gets to her as well, but they keep coming forward. Sophia’s losing enough control that the ice melts under them, the whole ungainly mess of people falling waist-deep in water, Bastet snarling and screaming with it.

Mithian is the first one to get her hands on Sophia, gripping with all the strength she’s got to keep Sophia from lashing out. Elena’s only a second behind, reaching out for Sophia’s bare skin and thinking, with all her might, _I’m a good vessel for Sidhe magic, some of yours will come to me_ until a little bit does, just a tiny little bit, but she recognizes the feeling.

Her arm is still bleeding, and Sophia is screaming loud enough that Elena thinks her eardrums might burst, but she feels a drop fall and shoves the magic back into Sophia and thinks _feedback_ as loud and as hard as she can, and then all of them are blasted back at once, falling in the water or stumbling, and in the middle of it all, there’s nothing but flower petals drifting down in the air.

Somewhere in the sudden silence, Elena hears sirens.

*

Elena barely stays conscious long enough to get home (making a point of losing Mithian on the way—it’s not as though Mithian doesn’t know where she lives, but if she loses her on purpose that’s rather a hint) and text work that she’s come down with a bad stomach flu and needs the week.

After that, she sleeps for a solid forty-eight hours, through whatever media interest there is, through a mass debrief on the message boards, though her father’s worry, and, she’s informed when she wakes up, through two visits from Mithian. “I don’t want to see her,” she says as firmly as she can, and turns off her phone without even bothering to check the messages. She knows what they’ll say, and she isn’t ready for it yet.

Her dad, bless him, doesn’t say another word on the subject. He takes a few days off work instead, and they spend them holed up in the house, ignoring the phone and the door and watching through Elena’s entire collection of bad superhero movies. She checks in on the message boards, giving the bare bones of what happened between her and Sophia, and takes everyone’s well-wishes with thanks. Most of them ask when she’ll be back out on the streets and she puts off an answer, though she does assure them she will be going back as soon as she can.

Elena spends more time than usual in her room testing her powers to see what’s different, now that the magic is gone and it’s all just her. It stays hard to pull up her usual disguise—she has to find a whole new way of getting to it, instead of just shifting into it like a second skin the way she used to—but after a while she gets used to it. Most things she can do the same as ever, but there are some things she could do that she was never able to do before: the gills, she discovers in the bath, weren’t a one-off adrenaline response but something she can make herself do, and other things come more easily to her. It feels, sometimes, as though her power is expanding out into the space the magic used to take up, and Elena thinks of Merlin Emrys saying that it undoubtedly took some sort of toll on her body. If it was suppressing her powers somehow, then that would make sense, but she’ll have to ask him to be sure, when she’s got the time and when she’s used to everything again. She feels strange and new in her skin.

The day her dad goes to work again, Elena spends the whole day training and stretching, powers and body both, and feels a little more settled and at ease after. He comes back in the evening and knocks on her door with a rueful smile. “Duck, did you know that Mithian King has been sitting on our doorstep for the past two hours?”

She never told him that Mithian is Huntress, but she doesn’t think she’ll have to; he’s a cop for a reason, after all, and it’s not because he likes doughnuts. “I knew I’d run out of time eventually,” she says, and then has no idea what to do.

Luckily, though, her dad does, giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I’ll tell her to come up and then make myself scarce, shall I?”

“Thanks, dad.” He goes off again with a kiss to her forehead, and Elena pulls on a jumper over her workout top. She wants to dress like she’s arming herself for something, but she feels a little bruised from her training and from the world in general, so she sticks with comfort.

Mithian is slow and deliberate about coming up the stairs, making noise even though they both know she could have been there seconds after Elena’s dad let her through the door, and quietly too. When she knocks, Elena waits a minute and takes a few deep breaths before she opens the door. Mithian looks exhausted but a little bit hopeful, and Elena can see where she has makeup covering a bruise on her temple. “Thank you for seeing me,” she says quietly when Elena just stands there. “You would have been within your rights to keep saying no.”

It’s best to be honest. “I’m not ready to be done being mad at you yet, but I will be eventually. I’m not sure where that leaves us, though.”

“I think that at the very least I owe you an explanation.”

Elena gestures her in and takes up residence on the bed, sitting with her feet tucked up to her chin. Mithian looks around and finally chooses the desk chair, swinging it around to sit in it backwards facing Elena—something the Huntress has always done, on the rare occasions they have time to sit down together somewhere. “So, you’ve known who I am since Grunhilda. Since before we started dating,” Elena says, just to give them somewhere to start.

Mithian winces. “Yes. And I … I don’t have an excuse, not that there’s one that I think you ought to accept from anyone, least of all me. I wanted you to guess, I think, but I didn’t want to _tell_ you, because you’re even more gunshy than most of us about people finding out who you are and I thought maybe you would cut and run. Even from me. And I liked you so much, as Elena and as Changeling, I didn’t want to risk losing either part of you.”

Elena nods, mostly for something to do. She’s been wondering all week what she would have done if she’d found out her favorite customer and one of her best friends were the same person, and she thinks she probably would have run in the opposite direction, or at least pretended she didn’t know. She can’t fault Mithian for bravery, at least, even if she still feels horribly as though Mithian doesn’t trust her. “It explains why you suddenly got protective of me on the streets,” she offers, since Mithian seems to be stuck.

That makes Mithian flinch like Elena hit her. “I’d no right. In either persona. I never liked it when you got hurt, every time anyone on the street hurt you I wanted to do the same back to them, but it was easier to restrain before I knew … you.” She looks down. “I wish you would yell at me.”

“I don’t know what you want me to say.” Elena tugs at a loose thread on the hem of her jumper, fidgeting with it until it pulls free. “I just … I don’t feel as though you trust me. You knew all of me when I didn’t know you knew, and you never told me. Would you ever have told me?”

“Of course, of _course_ I would have. I would have found a way. I trust you with my life, I trust you every night we’re out there together, and even before I found out who you were I was thinking of asking if we could meet, because I’ve met other supers out of costume, but you’re the only one I ever wanted to and then I did, but under the worst possible circumstances, and … I would love to do it all differently, but I wanted you so badly, I didn’t want you to run, and I knew this would come eventually, but at least I got to have you for a while, so I’m not sorry for that at least.” She raises her chin in a way Elena recognizes from both of her personas and Elena feels like an idiot all over again.

“You seem to think this is a break-up, and it’s not.” Elena mutters the words into her knees and doesn’t look to see Mithian’s reaction to that. “You’re my best friend, and for a while I thought Mithian was vying Huntress for the title, and now it turns out you’re the same person, and I want you in my life, I don’t want this to end, God, I love you, if Sophia had killed you I would have made her _beg_ for death, but I don’t know where to go from here.”

Mithian’s silent for a long, painful minute, long enough for Elena to think of everything she should have phrased differently, particularly telling Mithian she loves her in the middle of a terrible fight. “That might make it worse, actually,” she says at last, voice trembling like she’s trying not to cry. “At least when I was telling myself you’d end it I had an excuse to be a coward.”

Elena chances a look over at Mithian to find her rubbing angrily at her eyes. She uncurls a little, wanting to help and knowing that stopping the fight to comfort each other will just mean putting it off. “I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what I need from you to make this okay.”

Mithian looks up at her, and she looks wretched, and it’s really not fair that all Elena wants to do is hold her all night and pretend none of this is happening. “I don’t think I’ve said I’m sorry yet. And I really, truly am, Elena, I am so sorry for not telling you.”

“Sorry is a good start.” Her voice wobbles and she hides her face in her knees. “Now you’re making _me_ cry, that’s not fair.”

“I’ll apologize as much as you need me to, or I’ll leave and give you more space, or I’ll … tell you I love you too, which I should have done at the beginning of this conversation like I meant to, because even if it doesn’t help it’s good to know, at least.”

Elena lifts her head again. “Don’t leave, then we’ll have to have this conversation all over again and once is bad enough. Just … you’ll promise me that in future you won’t keep any information this big from me, you’ll let me make informed decisions for myself and not decide how I would react and go on from there.”

Mithian flinches again, and Elena feels just a little bit shamefully glad for it. “Of course, I know I should have done from the beginning. I promise.”

“And that you’ll try your best to treat me just the same on the street as you would any other super you’re friends with.”

“I’ll try. I have been trying, since you spoke to me about it that one time.” Elena doesn’t know what Mithian sees in her face, but it makes the tiniest of smiles show up on her face. “Anything else you want me to promise?”

Elena makes sure to think it over carefully, but she feels a little more at ease with everything in the air between them, and knowing that Mithian knows what she did and is willing to make amends for it. It will still take time to get over her hurt, but she still feels as though they’re having a fresh start. “Not right now.”

“Then I’ve one for you, if you don’t mind.” Mithian looks more like she’s trying not to frighten a wild animal than anything else, so Elena doesn’t scowl like her first instinct tells her, just nods for her to go on. “Someday soon, when we’ve fixed this, we get to do our I-love-yous again without crying in the middle of it.”

That’s meant to make her smile, so Elena does it. It feels odd, foreign on her face, and she spares a second to wonder just how worried her dad must have been about her all week. “Okay,” she says, and lets Mithian’s own hesitant smile warm her. She’s still wounded, angry, but some of that’s left over from Sophia, and some of it’s her own problems, and she _wants_ this to work, so she puts her feet on the floor and turns a hand palm up. “You could come over and give me a hug, if you’d like.”

Mithian is across the room in under a second, and then she’s practically in Elena’s lap, arms wrapped so tight around her that Elena has to squirm to remind her that just because she knows about the superstrength doesn’t make it much more comfortable. “Thank you, by the way,” Mithian whispers into her ear once both of them have stopped breathing shakily, choking down the last remnants of tears. “You saved my life the other night. She would have killed me, if only out of spite.”

“You would have done no less for me.” It’s a warming feeling, and she wonders if Bastet and Rogue or the Smugglers have this security, now they’ve been together for a while, the knowledge that the person in bed with them is someone they can and have trusted with their life, that they’ve always got backup now. “We’re going to be okay,” she says, suddenly sure of it.

That makes Mithian kiss her, move down to mouth an _I love you, I’m sorry_ against her neck, and Elena smiles and wraps her arms around a little tighter, lets herself forget for a few minutes about everything that still needs to be said.

*

**Epilogue**

“That’s an interesting new trick, Changeling.”

Elena peers up to the rooftop of the nearby building, and sure enough, there’s Mithian hopping down, her costume dirty the way it gets after a long patrol. Everyone is back out in the city with a vengeance after the damper that Sophia and the Sidhe magic put on things, and all the supers are feeling good about fighting it, especially with the Big Four back in town. “Were you really watching me fight crime without helping?” The criminal she’s trussing up lets out a groan.

“You seemed to have things under control.”

“Until he pulled a knife.” Elena bites back a smile at the way Mithian seems to feel the need to prove that she trusts Elena on her own. It’s appreciated, if a little awkward at times.

“Which wasn’t a problem because apparently you can go insubstantial. Which, as I mentioned, is an interesting new trick.”

She shrugs and hides her grin. “Rogue asked if I could do it, and since I’ve got more power now without the Sidhe interference, it seemed like a handy trick to learn.” She finishes with her handcuffs and drags the evening’s criminal, a crime lord on the run, to his feet. “Now, do you want to help me get this one to justice before we finish up for the night?”

“Of course.” There are plenty of supers out in the city, so Elena doesn’t feel guilty skiving off when it’s just barely one, not even taking Huntress with her. Nobody’s fighting anyone in particular at the moment, and it’s good to have a breather.

The walk to the nearest police precinct is quiet, punctuated only by the mutterings of Mr. Aredian, the crime lord, and when it’s over, Elena and Mithian take to the roofs. “Have a good night,” says Elena, barely resisting the urge to wink.

“See you later in the week for a patrol,” Mithian returns, and then they’re both off.

They both take circuitous routes back to Mithian’s flat, but Mithian cheats and gets there first, the way she has every night Elena’s gone back there after patrol over the past few weeks as things settle into this new version of normal. She’s already most of the way out of costume by the time Elena gets through the window she left open. “Anything interesting happen to you?” Elena asks, shaking off her disguise and starting on all her zippers and buckles.

“No, just a standard night. Other than the insubstantiality thing, which really was impressive. I didn’t know you were working on that.”

“I like surprising you.” Elena triumphantly manages to get out of the top half of her costume and goes to work on the bottom. A second later, Mithian’s hands are alongside hers, helping her to push the trousers down over her hips.

“I’m always surprised,” Mithian whispers right in her ear, at just the right volume to make Elena shiver. “I don’t even know half of what you can do, and I’d love to see.”

Elena turns around and offers a smile as she steps out of her clothes. “Would you like to see now?” She warms her palm and presses it to Mithian’s side over her thin undershirt. “I used to give Rogue … demonstrations.”

“Now you’re just trying to make me jealous. But I’d love to see.”

“I’ll show you sometime, but I’m a little tired to do much with my powers tonight. They may be stronger now, but doing the new tricks takes a lot out of me, the insubstantiality more so than most.” She looks up through her lashes before Mithian can start getting worried. “But that doesn’t mean I’m ready to go right to sleep.”

“Oh, by all means.” Mithian gets out of the rest of her clothes with flattering speed and tumbles them both into bed, pinning Elena down with enough strength that she thinks about calling cheat. As is becoming her habit, Mithian takes a second to catalogue any new bruises Elena collected over the night, lingering at the end on the raised scar on her arm from the encounter with Sophia. Elena kisses her to distract her, and Mithian allows it, sliding their bodies together gently, a quiet ending to their night, going so slow and making so sure to linger at every spot Elena enjoys that coming almost feels like an afterthought after the warm glow of the sex itself.

After, they cuddle in close, pulling up the blankets and looking at each other, a little sleepy but not quite ready for rest. “My father really wants to meet you,” Mithian says after a while. “I didn’t want to bring it up while we were still working things out, but I do want you to meet him. I think you’ll like each other.”

“Okay. Maybe we can have a dinner with both of us and both our dads, and then they’ll be so busy making friends that your dad won’t have time to scare the living daylights out of me.”

Mithian laughs. “If that’s what it takes. And my friends want to meet you too, though I think you’re more intimidated by them than you are by my dad.”

That’s because Elena is relatively certain she knows now that the PM’s son and his set (including, she was embarrassed to realize, Merlin Emrys, and she ought to have recognized him from his pictures in the paper) have more than one identity and the ones she thinks they have don’t make them noticeably less terrifying. Now that she and Mithian have it all out in the open, it seems Elena can’t go anywhere without recognizing someone she feels she ought to know—from going back to the art gallery on one of their first attempts at getting back to dating and seeing Freya, who gave Elena a hesitant smile and rolled up her sleeve to show the cut she remembers Bastet stitching up, to realizing that means her charming boyfriend was actually _Rogue_ , to getting a wink from the daughter of one of her dad’s colleagues, a blonde and fashion-obsessed girl named Vivian who Elena’s barely spoken to since they were twelve and still had comics in common.

However, that’s still a sore subject between them, and not one she wants to bring up when it’s been such a good night, everything getting back to the way it ought to be. The city feels like theirs again, and she’s got Mithian, her best friend in costume or out of it, slowly falling asleep next to her.

Sophia and the Sidhe magic is probably the closest Elena will ever come to glory, but she doesn’t mind that. She’s happy to leave the large heroics to those better suited for them and to come home safe every night to someone who thinks she’s wonderful whether she’s fighting crime or making coffee. That’s all the fame she needs, in the end.

“I love you,” she whispers, and drifts off to sleep to the sound of Mithian saying the same.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic of] A Statue Strong Enough For Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/770934) by [exmanhater](https://archiveofourown.org/users/exmanhater/pseuds/exmanhater)




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